Snow Float
Snow Pudding. Lemon Snow. Lemon Sponge. Mont Blanc, etc, etc or Russian Jelly. 2 quarts of water. 4 ounces scant of gelatine. 2 pounds of sugar. 6 lemons-juice of all, rinds of 2 or 3. 8 whites of eggs. Grate the lemon rinds and squeeze the juice into the sugar in a kettle, add the water and gelatine, set the kettle over the fire and beat the contents frequently till the gelatine is all dissolved, which will be at about the boiling point. Strain it into an ice cream freezer or other vessel set in ice water, and when the jelly has become nearly cold heat it with a wire egg whisk till frothy and almost while. Then whip the whites of eggs firm, stir them in and beat the whole again till it is set, when it will be like snow. Make a yellow custard with a quart of milk, 8 yolks and 4 ounces of sugar, and flavor, and serve it in the saucers with a spoonful of the float, ice cold. Articles like the foregoing come in serviceably when, as so often happens there is no milk to be had, for even the custards to go with them can be made with water.
For a yellow variety of the Russian jelly or gelatine float, when it is just at the boiling point stir in the yolks of 8 or 10 eggs quickly and take the jelly from the fire immediately before they become cooked. Flavor with lemon extract if necessary and beat it up without the addition of white of eggs. Race ginger boiled in the jelly makes another kind. It should be colored with burnt sugar and beaten up like the snow float.
Lemon juice more or less is essential in them all to correct the taste of gelatine.
A spoonful of whipped cream can be served with the floats instead of custard. Snow float that is left over is all ready to be boiled and run through the jelly bag to make wine jelly of the clearest for the next day. The white of egg in it clarifies it and then its strained out.
Why do fifteen families, numbering seventy-five souls, have fifteen very poor cooks preparing fifteen very poor dinners over fifteen different fires when, if they were all together, two skillful cooks with a helper and a man in the yard and two fires could prepare a most excellent dinner at less cost for them all?