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Pineapple Jelly
2 cups pineapple juice 1/2 cup lemon juice 1 1/4 cups sugar 1/3 box--1/4 ounce--vegetable gelatine 1 cup boiling water To the pineapple juice, add the lemon juice, the sugar and the vegetable gelatine cooked in the boiling water as directed. Mold and serve as for lemon jelly.
Other flavors may be made by using grape, cherry, strawberry, blackberry, raspberry or other fruit juices in place of the pineapple.
A straightforward agar jelly. Almost everything that can go wrong here is a matter of dissolving the agar properly and understanding that it behaves very little like gelatin.
- "Vegetable gelatine" is agarSold in the period as agar-agar, kanten or Japanese isinglass, and available now as flakes, powder or bars. Flakes and powder differ greatly by volume rather than by weight (roughly three times the volume of flakes for the same weight of powder), so weigh rather than measure by spoon: 1/4 ounce is about 7 grams.
- The box is gone"1/3 box" refers to a boxed brand of the period, and the 1/4 ounce given alongside it is the usable figure. That is a fairly firm set for about 3 1/2 cups of liquid, closer to a sliceable jelly than a wobbling one.
- Agar must actually boilThis is the hinge. Agar does not bloom in cold water and soften like gelatin; it has to be simmered in the water for several minutes until no specks remain, then combined while still hot. Any undissolved fragment simply stays a fragment in the finished mold.
- Add the hot agar to the juice, not the reverseAgar begins to set below about 100F, so pour the boiling solution into the sweetened juice in a steady stream while stirring. If the juice is refrigerator-cold the agar can seize into threads on contact.
- Fresh pineapple is not a problem hereBromelain in raw pineapple destroys gelatin desserts, which is why period gelatin recipes insisted on cooked or canned juice. Agar is a carbohydrate and unaffected, so fresh juice sets perfectly well.
- It sets at room temperatureNo refrigeration is needed to firm it. Expect a set in an hour or two on the counter; chilling adds little to the firmness.
- Sweetness and acid1 1/4 cups sugar with a half cup of lemon juice is a sharp, candy-sweet jelly by current taste. Reducing the sugar by a third is safe for texture, but very acidic mixtures can weaken agar slightly, so add the lemon juice after the agar is fully dissolved.
- Yield and servingAbout a quart, filling a 1-quart mold or six individual cups. Unmold onto a plate; agar releases cleanly with a brief dip of the mold in warm water and does not melt in a warm dining room.
"Vegetable gelatine" appears throughout meatless cookbooks of the early twentieth century for the obvious reason: ordinary gelatin is boiled out of calves' feet, bones and hides, which put every jellied dessert off limits to vegetarians. Agar, extracted from red seaweeds and long used in Japan as kanten, reached Western kitchens by routes that are not clear from the recipe itself, and appears to have been sold in some sort of packaged form that cooks measured by the fraction, as here. Its heat tolerance was a genuine domestic advantage in households without reliable ice, and the recipe's closing line u2014 swap in grape, cherry, strawberry, blackberry or raspberry u2014 reflects the period's fondness for a single reliable formula stretched across whatever fruit the season offered.