Orange Cream
INGREDIENTS for a quart mould.-1 oz. of isinglass, 6 large oranges, 1 lemon, sugar to taste, water, pint of good cream. AVERAGE COST, 2s. 6d.
Squeeze the juice from the oranges and lemon; strain it and put it into a saucepan with the isinglass and sufficient water to make it in all 1½ pint. Rub the sugar on the orange and lemon-rind, add it to the other ingredients, and boil all together for OPEN MOULD. about 10 minutes. Strain through a muslin bag and, when cold, beat up with it 1/2 pint of thick cream. Wet a mould, or soak it in cold water; pour in the cream and put it in a cool place to set. If the weather is very cold, 1 oz. of isinglass will be found sufficient for the above proportion of ingredients.
TIME.-10 minutes to boil the juice and water.
SEASONABLE from November to May.
A Victorian moulded jelly-cream that depends on gelatine strength and on getting the orange oil out of the peel rather than on any difficult technique. Two things need translating: the isinglass, and the fact that the ingredient list and the method disagree about how much cream to use.
- Isinglass to gelatineIsinglass is dried fish swim-bladder, sold in leaf or shred and variable in setting power. For 1½ pints (30 fl oz) of liquid, use about 1/2 to 3/4 oz of powdered gelatine, roughly two to three standard 1/4-oz envelopes, for a jelly firm enough to turn out of a mould.
- Do not boil the gelatineThe original boils juice, water and isinglass together for ten minutes. Modern gelatine loses strength with prolonged boiling: bloom it in a little cold liquid, then warm the strained juice mixture to just below a simmer and stir it in until dissolved.
- Ten minutes of boiled juiceBoiling citrus juice hard dulls and slightly cooks the flavour. Warming it through is enough, and the result tastes markedly fresher.
- The cream discrepancyThe ingredient list says a pint of good cream; the method uses only half a pint. Half a pint (10 fl oz) of double or heavy cream against 1½ pints of jelly is the proportion that actually sets cleanly. Use the full pint and it will be richer and softer.
- Rubbing sugar on the rindThis is the old method for extracting citrus oil: rub lump sugar over the whole fruit until the surface is coloured and fragrant, scraping it off as it goes. Fine grated zest steeped in the warm liquid and then strained out gives the same effect.
- Cream temperature"When cold" matters. Beat the cream into a jelly base that is cool but still fluid; if the base is warm the cream thins and separates, if it has begun to set you get lumps.
- Measures and mouldImperial pints are 20 fl oz, so a "quart mould" holds about 40 fl oz, or a little under 1.15 litres. That is about right for 30 fl oz of jelly plus whipped-in cream. The stray words OPEN MOULD in the middle of the text are a caption from an illustration in the original book, not an instruction.
- Setting and servingA "cool place" means the refrigerator now: 4 to 6 hours, or overnight. Dip the mould briefly in warm water to turn it out. Serves six to eight.
- SeasonNovember to May reflects the old imported citrus season. Any good juicing orange works year round, though blood oranges in winter give a striking colour.
Isinglass was the standard clear setting agent in nineteenth-century English kitchens, prized because it gave a brilliant, almost invisible jelly where calf's-foot stock could taste of the kitchen and bone gelatine of the glue-pot. It came in the form of dried sturgeon bladders, sold as "leaf" or "staple" isinglass, and it was expensive enough that Mrs Beeton costed a quart mould at 2s 6d. Moulded creams of this kind belonged to the ornamental end of the meal, turned out onto a glass dish and served with the second course or the sweets; the printed line OPEN MOULD survives here because the original page carried a woodcut of the mould the recipe assumed. Isinglass gradually fell out of domestic use as commercially standardised powdered gelatine became cheap, though it still has a life in brewing, where it clears beer.