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Lemon Jelly No. 1
8 lemons 1 ounce vegetable gelatine 4 ounces sugar 2 oranges 1/2 pint water Take the oranges and lemons, and grate the rinds, and add it to the strained juice, sugar and water; put them in a saucepan, and boil five minutes; then add the gelatine, which has been soaked in a little cold water. When dissolved, pass all through a jelly-bag or hair sieve; rinse with cold water a fancy mold; put in the mixture, and allow it to set.
A Victorian-Edwardian agar jelly, from the vegetarian shelf where animal gelatine was off the table. Two things need adjusting: the setting agent behaves nothing like leaf gelatine, and the quantity given will produce something closer to a rubber puck than a jelly.
- What "vegetable gelatine" isAgar-agar, sold at the time as shredded or sheet kanten or "Japanese isinglass"; some houses used carrageen (Irish moss) under the same heading. Modern agar powder is far more finely milled and much stronger by weight than the old shreds, so an ounce of powder is not an ounce of the original.
- The quantity is the problemEight lemons and two oranges give roughly 2 to 2 1/2 cups of juice, plus a half pint of water — somewhere around 700 to 850 ml of liquid. An ounce of modern agar powder in that is roughly 3 to 4 percent, several times a normal setting dose. Agar sets firm at 0.5 to 1 percent, so scale to 1 to 2 teaspoons of powder for this volume.
- Agar must boil, and boil in waterIt hydrates only above about 85C and needs a good couple of minutes at a rolling boil to dissolve fully. Soaking in cold water, as directed, only softens it. The reliable order is: boil the agar in the half pint of water until no specks remain, then add the sweetened juice off the heat.
- Acid weakens the setCitrus juice at this concentration hydrolyses agar, and prolonged boiling once the agar is in can noticeably soften the set or, if pushed, prevent it firming at all. Note that the recipe adds the agar after the five-minute boil, not before. Safer to keep the boiling to the water-and-agar stage and add the juice last, warm but not simmering.
- Grated rindGrate only the coloured zest — the white pith is bitter, and eight lemons' worth of it will dominate. The rind is strained out at the jelly-bag stage, so it functions purely as an infusion.
- StrainingA jelly-bag or hair sieve becomes a fine nylon sieve or two layers of muslin. Do it quickly: agar begins to gel at around 40C, well above room temperature, and a cooling mixture will clog the cloth.
- SugarFour ounces (about 1/2 cup) against the juice of ten fruits is sharp by modern taste. Increase to 6 or 8 ounces if you want something closer to a dessert jelly than a palate cleanser.
- Setting and yieldAgar sets at room temperature in an hour or so and does not need chilling, though the fridge does no harm. Expect about 1 1/2 pints, serving six, and note that agar jelly unmolds cleanly and cuts with a knife rather than wobbling.
Agar reached British and American kitchens in the late nineteenth century as an import from Japan, where kanten had been made from red seaweed since at least the seventeenth century, and it arrived just as vegetarian cookery was organising itself into books. Gelatine, then as now, is boiled from animal bones and hides, which put every jelly, blancmange and moulded cream out of reach for meatless households — hence a whole chapter here devoted to the substitute. The same seaweed extract went on to become the standard culture medium in bacteriology, which is why it is one of the few Victorian kitchen novelties still manufactured in quantity today.