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Lemon Jelly No. 2
3/4 cup lemon juice 1 1/4 cups sugar 1 1/2 cups cold water 1/3 box--1/4 ounce--vegetable gelatine 1 cup boiling water Prepare the vegetable gelatine as directed, and cook in the boiling water. To the lemon juice, add the sugar and cold water and the cooked vegetable gelatine. Pour into molds which have been wet with cold water, and set in a cool place to mold. This may be served with whipped cream.
A clear agar jelly, stiffer and more brittle than a gelatin one, and unusual in that it sets at room temperature. The instructions are terse because the book assumes you have the directions printed on the gelatine box.
- What "vegetable gelatine" isAgar-agar, a seaweed extract sold then in pressed boxes of shredded or sheet form. Powdered agar from an Asian grocery or health-food shop is the direct substitute; 1/4 ounce is about 7 grams.
- Preparing the agar"As directed" means soaking: shredded or sheet agar needs 20-30 minutes in cold water, then simmering until wholly dissolved, which can take 5-10 minutes and longer than most cooks expect. Powdered agar needs no soak but still must boil. Undissolved agar leaves gritty threads and the jelly will not set evenly.
- The hinge: keep the acid out of the potAgar loses much of its setting power if boiled in acid. As it happens, the order given here avoids that — the agar cooks in plain water and the lemon juice goes in afterward — so do not be tempted to simmer everything together.
- Work fast when combiningAgar begins to gel at around 95-100F, far above gelatin's setting point. Have the lemon, sugar and cold water mixed and the molds wet before the agar comes off the heat, and stir the hot agar in at once, or it will set in ropes as it hits the cold liquid.
- SettingA "cool place" is genuinely all that is needed; agar sets and holds well above refrigerator temperature, so this will keep its shape on a summer sideboard. Refrigeration is faster but not required.
- Texture and sweetnessExpect a short, clean-breaking jelly rather than a wobbling one, and a sharp result — 1 1/4 cups sugar against 3/4 cup lemon juice is tart by modern standards but not excessive. If you want a softer set, reduce the agar to about 5 grams.
- YieldAbout 3 1/4 cups of liquid, plus the volume of the dissolved sugar, so allow a mold of a quart or more, or six individual molds. To unmold, dip the mold briefly in warm water; agar releases readily.
Agar-agar reached Western kitchens through Chinese and Japanese cookery, where it had long been used for sweetened jellies, and it entered English-language cookbooks under the trade name "vegetable gelatine." Its appeal in a book like this is straightforward: ordinary gelatin is rendered from the bones, hides and connective tissue of animals, so no strictly meatless table could use it. Agar also solved a practical problem in an age of unreliable ice, since it sets and holds at room temperature. The bacteriological laboratories of the same era adopted it for a related reason, its resistance to melting at incubation temperature, and the culture plate is now its better-known use. The numbering of this recipe "No. 2" may reflect what is often said of period cookbooks, that they gave several versions of a standard jelly at different strengths and sweetnesses and left the cook to choose.