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Nut Jelly
2 ounces of grated almonds 2 ounces of grated pine kernels 1 1/2 pints of milk 2 tablespoons of cream 1 1/2 ounces of vegetable gelatine 1 ounce of sugar Soak the gelatine all night in a little of the milk; put the remainder of the milk into a double saucepan, and bring to boiling point, then add the gelatine, and allow it to boil for five minutes; pour this over the very finely ground nuts, add the sugar and cream, and beat all together for ten minutes. Pour into a mold, rinsing the mold with cold water first, and put it to set until next day.
A blancmange in all but name, thickened with agar rather than animal gelatine. Two things need attention before you start: the quantity of setting agent, and the fact that agar behaves nothing like gelatine.
- The gelatine quantity is the problem"Vegetable gelatine" here almost certainly means agar, sold at the time as coarse flakes or shredded strips, much bulkier by volume than today's refined powder (the usual three-to-one flake-to-powder conversion is by volume, not weight). Modern agar powder sets at roughly 1 to 2 teaspoons (2-4 g) per cup of liquid; 1 1/2 ounces (about 42 g) to 1 1/2 pints would produce a solid, chalky block. Treat the original figure as unusable and scale to the product in front of you.
- Boiling is the hingeAgar must be brought to a full boil and held there to hydrate — the five minutes is not padding. Unlike gelatine, it will not dissolve in warm liquid, and undissolved flakes stay as gritty specks in the finished jelly.
- It sets at room temperatureAgar gels at around 100F/38C, so the mixture will begin to thicken in the bowl while you are still beating. Work fast, keep the mixture warm, and pour into the mold before it stiffens. The overnight rest is for firmness and flavour, not because chilling is required.
- Units1 1/2 imperial pints is about 30 fl oz, or a little over 3 1/2 US cups. A double saucepan is a double boiler or bain-marie, used here to stop milk scorching — a heavy-based pan and attention will do the same.
- Grated nuts"Grated" means reduced almost to flour on a fine grater or nut mill. Almonds should be blanched and skinned or the jelly turns speckled and slightly bitter. A food processor works, but stop before the nuts release oil and turn to butter.
- The ten minutes of beatingThis keeps the nut meal suspended rather than sinking to what will become the top of the turned-out mold. It is worth doing, though with an electric mixer three or four minutes at moderate speed achieves the same suspension before the agar sets.
- SweetnessOne ounce of sugar (about 2 tablespoons) across some three and a half cups of milk is barely sweet by current taste; adjust upward if you want a dessert, and a little almond extract or orange-flower water is in period.
- YieldRoughly 1 quart, serving six. Rinsing the mold in cold water, as directed, is the correct trick for turning out — agar unmolds cleanly and holds sharp edges far better than gelatine.
Vegetarian cookery books of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries needed a setting agent, because ordinary gelatine was rendered from the bones, hides and hooves of slaughtered animals and was therefore off the table. The answer was agar, extracted from red seaweeds and long used in Japan as kanten; European and American suppliers marketed it as "vegetable gelatine" or "Japanese isinglass" in flakes and shreds. The dish itself follows the older blancmange pattern — milk, sugar, ground almonds, set firm and turned out of a mold — but the pine kernels point to the other preoccupation of the movement, which was proving that nuts could carry the protein and richness that meat had supplied. Recipes of this kind sat alongside the nut butters, nut meats and nut loaves promoted by vegetarian sanatoria and food companies of the same decades.