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Oranges, A Pretty Dish of
INGREDIENTS for quart mould.-6 large oranges, 1/2 lb. of loaf sugar, 1/4 pint of water, 1/2 pint of cream, 2 tablespoonfuls of any kind of liqueur, sugar to taste. AVERAGE CosT, 1s. 9d.
Put the sugar and water into a saucepan, and boil them until the sugar becomes brittle, which may be ascertained by taking up a small quantity in a spoon, and dipping it in cold water; if the sugar is sufficiently boiled, it will easily snap. Peel the oranges, remove as much of the white pith as possible, and divide them into nice-sized slices, without breaking the thin white skin which surrounds the juicy pulp. Place the pieces of orange on small skewers, dip them into the hot sugar, and arrange them in layers round a plain mould, which ORANGES, ICED. should be well oiled with the purest saladoil. The sides of the mould only should be lined with the oranges, and the centre left open for the cream. Let the sugar become firm by cooling; turn the oranges carefully out on a dish, and fill the centre with whipped cream, flavoured with any kind of liqueur, and sweetened with pounded sugar. This is an exceedingly ornamental and nice dish for the supper-table.
TIME.-10 minutes to boil the sugar.
SEASONABLE from November to May.
A caramel-lined mould filled with liqueur cream. It is straightforward confectionery work, but the sugar stage and the weather matter more than the timings given.
- Ignore the stray line at the top"Take them out carefully with a spoon" and the words "ORANGES, ICED." mid-paragraph are fragments of the neighbouring entries and the page's running head, picked up when the page was transcribed. Neither belongs to this recipe.
- The hinge: sugar temperature, not time"Boil until brittle... it will easily snap" is the hard-crack stage, 300-310F/150-155C. The stated 10 minutes depends entirely on your pan and heat; use a thermometer, and take the pan off the heat the moment it reaches temperature or the caramel will taste burnt.
- Imperial measuresBeeton's pint is 20 fl oz, so 1/2 pint of cream is about 1 1/4 US cups and 1/4 pint of water about 5 fl oz (2/3 cup). 1/2 lb loaf sugar is 8 oz / about 1 1/8 cups granulated.
- Loaf sugarSold as a hard cone to be broken up and pounded; it was prized for boiled sugar work because it was the purest grade available. Ordinary granulated sugar is its equal now.
- Choose a dry dayHard-crack caramel pulls moisture from the air and goes tacky within an hour or two in a humid kitchen. Assemble this shortly before serving rather than the morning before.
- Skewers and mouldCocktail sticks do the job of the "small skewers" for dipping. A quart (about 1 litre) plain mould or charlotte tin, brushed with a flavourless oil, is what is wanted; a bland vegetable oil now stands in for the "purest salad-oil", which in 1861 meant good olive oil.
- Handle the caramel with careSugar at 300F causes deep burns and clings. Work with a bowl of cold water beside you and dip the fruit rather than pouring.
- The segments"Nice-sized slices, without breaking the thin white skin" means whole segments with their membrane intact, peeled of pith. Blot them dry before dipping or the caramel will seize and crystallise.
- Yield and servingA quart mould serves six to eight. It must be turned out and eaten the same evening; the caramel softens against the fruit and the whipped cream will not hold overnight.
This belongs to the Victorian supper table rather than to dinner proper: a cold, moulded, deliberately showy dish meant to be looked at before it was eaten, of a piece with the jellies, creams and charlottes that fill the same section of Beeton's book. The technique resembles French confectionery practice, in which fruit is dipped in hard-crack sugar and sold glazed, though here the caramel is used structurally, as a shell to be unmoulded. The season given, November to May, broadly tracks the arrival of Mediterranean oranges in British ports; Seville and Maltese fruit reached London through the winter months, which is why so many nineteenth-century orange recipes are cold-weather dishes rather than summer ones. The costing of 1s. 9d. is characteristic of Beeton, who gave an average cost for most recipes so that a young mistress could judge a dish against her housekeeping book before she ordered it.