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Cucumber Jelly
1 3/4 cups cucumber pulp 1/3 package vegetable gelatine--1/4 ounce 1/4 cup lemon juice 1 cup water 1/2 teaspoon salt Few drops onion juice To prepare the cucumber pulp, peel the cucumbers, and grate; strain through a colander, and press through as much liquid as possible. Add the lemon juice, salt and onion juice. Prepare the vegetable gelatine by soaking in warm water twenty minutes or more. Drain, and cook in the boiling water five to ten minutes. Strain, and add to the juices. Turn into molds wet with cold water. When firm, unmold, and serve upon a lettuce leaf with a salad dressing.
A cold savoury jelly of the kind that once opened a summer luncheon, set with agar rather than animal gelatine. Everything depends on getting the agar fully dissolved before it meets the acid.
- Vegetable gelatine is agar"Vegetable gelatine" here means agar-agar, sold as flakes, strands or powder in Asian groceries and health shops. The recipe's 1/4 ounce is about 7 g, which is very roughly 2 tablespoons of flakes or 2 to 3 teaspoons of powder; powder is far more concentrated by volume than flakes or strands, so weigh rather than measure by spoon.
- Dissolve it completelyAgar must reach a full boil and hold it to hydrate; undissolved threads will settle out and the jelly will never set evenly. Five to ten minutes of actual simmering in the cup of water is the minimum, and the liquid should look clear with no visible fibres.
- Add the acid last, as writtenLemon juice weakens agar's gel if boiled with it. The original happens to cook the agar in plain water and stir it into the seasoned juices afterward; keep to that order.
- It sets at room temperatureUnlike gelatine, agar gels around 100F and stays firm even in a warm room, so it will begin to thicken as soon as it hits the cold cucumber liquid. Have the moulds rinsed and ready and pour without delay.
- Cucumber pulpThree to four medium cucumbers, peeled and grated, give about 1 3/4 cups of strained liquid and pulp. Press hard in a colander or fine sieve; watery pulp with large shreds gives a coarse jelly.
- Onion juiceGrate a piece of onion and squeeze it in a cloth, or press it through a garlic press. A few drops is right; more will dominate a jelly this delicate.
- TextureAgar sets short and slightly brittle rather than wobbly. If you want it softer, reduce the agar by about a quarter rather than adding more liquid.
- Yield and servingFills four to six small moulds, or one 3-cup mould. Serve on lettuce with mayonnaise or a boiled dressing, as a first course or alongside cold food.
Agar-agar, extracted from red seaweeds and long used in Japanese and Chinese cookery, reached Western kitchens in the nineteenth century under trade names like Japanese isinglass and, in cookbooks such as this one, simply "vegetable gelatine." Its appeal to the meatless cookery of the period was practical and doctrinal at once: ordinary gelatine is boiled from calves' feet, bones and hides, so any moulded salad or dessert was closed to vegetarians until a plant-derived setting agent was available. A chilled cucumber jelly on a lettuce leaf was exactly the kind of dish meant to prove that a meatless table could still look like a proper luncheon. The same seaweed extract also became standard in bacteriology labs as a culture medium.