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Twelfth Day: Edith
One pint cream, one small cup fine sugar, one gill wine. Mix all together in a large bowl and beat hard with a whisk, or what is still better, churn with a whip-churn. As the froth rises, take it carefully off with a spoon, and place in the dish in which it is to be served. "That will look beautiful with the jelly," said Edith. "What kind shall we make to go with it?" "We haven't tried orange jelly yet; and as there is to be wine in the cream, we don't care for wine jelly to eat with it. I think orange will suit our young friends as well as anything."
No. 163-ORANGE JELLY.
Juice of two oranges and grated rind of one, one lemon, juice and peel, one package Cox's gelatine, soaked in a very little water for an hour, one pint boiling water, one cup and a half sugar, half a cup of wine, a good pinch of cinnamon. "The gelatine has been soaking more than an hour," said Aunt Jane, "and we may as well begin on it now as any time. Edith, you may make the jelly, Rose the jumbles, and Grace the macaroons. While the jelly is under way, Edith will have time to make the cocoanut drops. All these will keep nicely if they are shut up tight. To-morrow we will make the little sponge-cakes, soda biscuits, puffs, chocolate and whip." "I thought you said we would have crisp cookies, Aunt Jane." "Did I? I think we shall have quite enough without them. We'll leave them until some other time. They are exceedingly nice, are made without any soda, and will keep a long time. Now get to work, all of you."
After Edith had grated the peel of the oranges and lemons, and squeezed out the juice very thoroughly, she threw in the cinnamon, and then poured on them a pint of boiling water. The whole was then closely covered, that the flavor might be completely diffused. Then, as it was to remain so for half an hour, Edith left it and made the cocoanut drops; after which the jelly-water was strained and the sugar stirred in. It was then put over the fire until it boiled, when the soaked gelatine was stirred in, and as soon as this was dissolved, the whole was poured into a flannel bag and run into moulds.
The cocoanut drops, being made after the following simple recipe, did not take a very long time. No. 164-CoCOANUT WAFERS.
Half a pint powdered sugar, the same of desiccated cocoanut, three even tablespoonfuls of flour, half a teaspoonful vanilla, two eggs. Beat the eggs and add successively the sugar, vanilla, flour and cocoanut. Bake on buttered paper.
Three recipes run together here: a wine whip, an orange jelly to serve beside it, and coconut wafers. The whip is the old skimmed-froth kind, closer to syllabub than to modern whipped cream.
- A gillHalf a cup, four fluid ounces. The recipe does not say which wine; a sweet white or fortified wine such as sherry or madeira would suit the dish better than a table red, but that is a judgement, not the book's instruction.
- The whip-churnA syllabub churn: a cylinder with a plunger worked up and down to raise froth. A stand mixer or a balloon whisk does the same work, though the technique differs — see below.
- Skimming the frothThe instruction to lift off the froth as it rises is not decoration. Cream then was unhomogenised and variable in fat, and in whips of this kind the lightest foam was skimmed while the thinner remainder was left behind. With modern heavy cream at 36 per cent fat, well chilled, the whole bowl will whip together; stop at soft peaks, as the wine can thin the cream.
- Cox's gelatineJ. & G. Cox of Edinburgh sold sheet and "sparkling" gelatine by the package, and a package was commonly reckoned at about an ounce, generally taken as enough to set roughly a quart of liquid. That is genuinely ambiguous today — modern envelopes are a quarter-ounce and set two cups each. Judge by total liquid: here the pint of water, the citrus juices and the half cup of wine come to something over three cups.
- Soaking and dissolvingGelatine is softened in cold water, then dissolved in hot liquid off a hard boil. Add it after the sweetened juice has boiled and been drawn back, and stir only until clear.
- The flannel bagA jelly bag, used to clear the liquid of pulp and zest before moulding. Damp muslin or a coffee filter in a sieve does the job. Pour slowly and do not squeeze, or the jelly clouds.
- UnmouldingChill at least four hours, longer for a large mould. Dip the mould briefly in warm water to release.
- Half a pint of sugar and coconutDry goods measured by volume: half a pint is one cup. Note that "powdered" sugar here means finely ground granulated rather than modern confectioners' sugar, so measure by volume rather than by weight. Desiccated coconut is drier and finer than the sweetened flaked coconut sold now; use unsweetened desiccated.
- Baking the wafersNo temperature is given. This is a coconut macaroon-type batter of whole eggs, sugar, flour and coconut, and wants a moderate oven, 325 to 350F, for 12 to 15 minutes, until set and just coloured at the edges. Buttered paper means parchment today; the drops spread, so leave room.
- YieldThe whip serves six to eight as a light dessert, the jelly about the same, and the batter makes roughly two dozen small wafers. The whip must be made close to serving; the jelly and wafers keep, as Aunt Jane says, if shut up tight.
This comes from Elizabeth Stansbury Kirkland's Six Little Cooks; or, Aunt Jane's Cooking Class, a Chicago children's book of the 1870s that taught cookery through a running story — hence Edith, Rose and Grace dividing the work between them. The whip itself belongs to the long syllabub family, in which wine and sugar are beaten into cream and the froth skimmed off as it rises; by this date the drink had largely become a dessert served in glasses. Cox's gelatine, named in the jelly recipe, was the Edinburgh firm of J. & G. Cox, whose packaged sheet gelatine was one of the products that moved jellies out of the calf's-foot era and into reach of an ordinary kitchen — and, as here, of a child working under supervision.