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Vegetable Jelly Salad
One-half box of gelatine, three-fourths of a cup of cold water, one pint of boiling water, one-half cup of sugar, one-half cup of lemon juice (large), three tomatoes, two bunches of water cress, mayonnaise dressing. Soak the gelatine in cold water. Cut the lemon rind thin and cook it in the water five minutes, then add the soaked gelatine, sugar and lemon juice. Strain it into a pitcher. Wet a mould in cold water, and pack it in ice. Put in a layer of jelly, when hard a layer of nice red tomatoes sliced with a little water cress. Add a little jelly to keep the vegetables in place before adding enough to cover the fruit. Repeat till the mould is full. Garnish with cresses and serve with mayonnaise dressing.
A lemon jelly mould layered with tomato and cress, from the era when gelatine salads were a mark of a well-run kitchen. Two things decide whether it works: a firm enough set for slicing, and tomatoes dry enough not to weep into the jelly.
- "One-half box of gelatine"Period boxes of granulated gelatine ran to roughly an ounce, though sizes varied by maker, so half a box is on the order of 1 1/2 to 2 tablespoons. That is on the light side for the 3 1/4 cups of liquid here; for a mould firm enough to unmould and slice, count on about 1 tablespoon per 2 cups of liquid and err on the generous side.
- The lemon measure"One-half cup of lemon juice (large)" is ambiguous — it most likely means a generous half cup, from three or four large lemons. Take the rind in wide strips with a peeler, avoiding the white pith, which turns the jelly bitter over five minutes of simmering.
- Blooming and dissolvingSoften the gelatine in the cold water for five to ten minutes until it swells, then stir it into the hot lemon infusion off the boil. Boiling gelatine outright weakens its setting power and gives a cloudy jelly. Straining is not optional here; it catches rind, pulp and any undissolved grains.
- "Pack it in ice" means the refrigeratorPacking the mould in ice was the usual way to set a jelly quickly in a kitchen of this sort. Refrigerate instead: 20 to 30 minutes per layer until tacky-firm, and two to three hours for the finished mould before turning it out.
- Layering without a slideEach layer must be set enough to hold the next, and the jelly you pour over the tomatoes should be cool and syrupy, not hot, or it will melt the layer beneath and float the vegetables. The instruction to add "a little jelly to keep the vegetables in place" first is the hinge of the whole recipe.
- Prepare the tomatoes dryPeel the tomatoes, cut out the seed jelly, and drain the slices on a towel for a few minutes. Raw tomato is largely water, and any that leaks out will pool as a soft, cloudy seam.
- WatercressUse only tender sprig tips, well dried; long stems trapped in jelly are stringy on the fork. Reserve a bunch loose for the garnish rather than burying it all.
- Unmoulding and yieldDip the mould briefly in warm water and invert onto a chilled platter. A quart mould serves six to eight as a first course, with mayonnaise passed separately so it does not slacken against the cold jelly.
Molded gelatine salads like this one belong to the decades after granulated gelatine became a cheap, reliable pantry item in the United States — before that, cooks extracted their own from calves' feet or isinglass, an all-day business that put jellies firmly in the category of luxury. Once packaged gelatine had become cheap and widely available, the aspic mould became a way to show off skill and a cold larder at once, and collections such as this one filled out their pages with them. Note that the jelly is sweetened and sharply lemony rather than made from stock: this is a fruit-jelly formula pressed into service as a vegetable salad, and the recipe duly calls the tomatoes "the fruit." The pairing with mayonnaise, and the near-obligatory watercress garnish, were the standard salad grammar of the period.