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Orange Jelly
1 box gelatin. 1 pint cold water. 1 1/2 cups boiling water. 1 cup sugar. 1 cup orange juice. Juice of 1 lemon.
Mrs. Wilson gives proportions only, in the manner of the period, when every cook knew how a moulded jelly was put together. The quantities work; the assembly is left to you.
- "1 box gelatin"A box of granulated gelatin in this period was 1 ounce, sold as four quarter-ounce envelopes. That is the whole box, not one envelope, and it is what sets the roughly five cups of liquid here into a firm, sliceable mould.
- SoakingThe pint of cold water is almost certainly the soaking water rather than an extra addition, counting toward the total liquid, though the recipe does not say so. Older gelatins were generally soaked 30 to 60 minutes to swell; modern granulated gelatin is fully bloomed in 5 to 10 minutes.
- Order of workSoften the gelatin in the cold water, pour on the boiling water and stir until no grains remain, dissolve the sugar in it, then add the strained juices. The juice goes in last and off the heat; boiling orange juice turns it flat and slightly bitter.
- Strain the juicePulp and membrane cloud the finished jelly and settle out in a layer. A fine sieve or a double thickness of cheesecloth is enough.
- FirmnessOne ounce of gelatin to about five cups of liquid gives a jelly stiff enough to unmould and cut. For a softer spoon jelly served in glasses, use three envelopes rather than four.
- ChillingFour hours in the refrigerator for a shallow mould, overnight for a deep one. To unmould, dip the mould to its rim in warm water for a few seconds only.
- YieldAbout a quart and a quarter — eight servings, or six generous ones.
Moulded gelatin desserts belonged to the wealthy so long as gelatin meant boiling down calves' feet for hours and clarifying the result with egg white. Commercially granulated gelatin, generally traced to the 1890s in the United States, put a firm clear jelly within reach of any household with an icebox, and cookbooks of the following decades are thick with them. Mrs. Mary A. Wilson wrote in and just after the First World War, when American home cooks were being pressed to economize on wheat, fat and sugar; a jelly like this one stretches the juice of a few oranges into a dish for eight, and its showiness comes entirely from the mould rather than from anything expensive in the bowl. Orange paired with the juice of a single lemon turns up often in recipes of the period — the acid sharpens a juice that would otherwise taste merely sweet once sugar and gelatin have dulled it.