Pears, Moulded
INGREDIENTS for quart mould. -4 large pears or 6 small ones, 8 cloves, sugar to taste, water, a small piece of cinnamon, 1/4 pint of raisin wine, a strip of lemon-peel, the juice of 1/21 lemon, oz. of gelatine. AVERAGE COST, 1s.
Peel and cut the pears into quarters; put them into a jar with 3/4 pint of water, cloves, cinnamon and sufficient sugar to sweeten the whole nicely; cover down the top of the jar, and bake the pears in a gentle oven until perfectly tender, but do not allow them to break. When done, lay the pears in a plain mould, which should be well wetted, and boil 1/2 pint of the liquor the pears were baked in with the wine, lemon-peel, strained juice and gelatine. Let these ingredients boil quickly for 5 minutes, then strain the liquid warm over the pears; put the mould in a cool place, and when the jelly is firm, turn it out on a glass dish.
TIME.-2 hours to bake the pears in a cool oven.
SEASONABLE from August to February.
A Victorian moulded fruit jelly that depends on two things: pears that hold their shape through a long slow bake, and enough gelatine to turn out cleanly. The printed text has been mangled by the typesetter in a couple of places, so read the quantities with care.
- The gelatine quantity is missingThe original reads "oz. of gelatine" with no figure. With modern gelatine, roughly 1/2 oz (about 14 g, or two standard sachets of powdered gelatine) to a pint of liquid will set the 3/4 pint of liquor and wine here firmly enough to unmould; Beeton's own jelly recipes tend to specify more, as period gelatine and isinglass were weaker. Treat any figure as reconstruction, not as the book's own.
- "Juice of 1/21 lemon"A misprint for half a lemon. The strip of peel and the juice are there to cut the sweetness of the baking syrup and the wine.
- Oven heatA "gentle" or "cool" oven is 275-300F (140-150C). Two hours at that heat is not excessive for hard stewing pears; a modern dessert pear may be tender in 45-60 minutes, and the point is tender but unbroken quarters.
- Don't boil the gelatine hardProlonged hard boiling can weaken gelatine's setting power. Boil the liquor with the wine, peel and juice to infuse, take it off the heat, then stir in the softened gelatine until dissolved and strain while warm.
- Raisin wineA sweet homemade wine made by fermenting raisins, once a standard cheap store cupboard wine. Sweet sherry, Madeira or a Muscat gives the same effect in the same quantity, 1/4 pint (5 fl oz / 150 ml).
- Units and vesselsAn imperial pint is 20 fl oz, so 3/4 pint is 15 fl oz (about 425 ml) and 1/2 pint is 10 fl oz (285 ml). A quart mould holds 40 fl oz, a little over 1.1 litres. The "jar" is any lidded ovenproof pot; a covered casserole does the job.
- Wetting the mouldRinsing the mould with cold water and not drying it helps the jelly release. Chill until fully set, at least 4-6 hours and better overnight, then dip the mould briefly in hot water before turning out.
- YieldA quart mould serves six to eight as a light dessert. Cream, plain or lightly whipped, is the usual accompaniment.
Moulded jellies were the showpiece of the Victorian cold table, and their spread through middle-class households tracks the arrival of packaged sheet or leaf gelatine and other isinglass substitutes, which replaced the tedious business of clarifying isinglass or boiling down calves' feet. This particular dish also belongs to the older English tradition of the baked or "warden" pear: hard cooking pears, useless raw, were sat for hours in a covered jar with sugar and whole spice until they turned tender and faintly rosy, a treatment recorded in English cookery long before Beeton. The "seasonable from August to February" note reflects a fruit that keeps in a cool store through the winter, and the raisin wine reflects a period when a cheap sweet wine could be made at home from dried fruit rather than bought by the bottle. At one shilling the mould, it was the sort of dessert a household could put on a glass dish and call handsome without spending much.