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Jellied Prunes
1/2 box gelatine or 2½ tablespoons granulated gelatine 1 cup sugar 1/4 cup lemon juice Pick over, wash, and soak prunes for several hours in two cups cold water, and cook in same water until soft; remove prunes; stone, and cut in quarters. To prune water add enough boiling water to make two cups. Soak gelatine in half-cup cold water, dissolve in hot liquid, add sugar, lemon juice, then strain, add prunes, mould, and chill. Stir twice while cooling to prevent prunes from settling. Serve with sugar and cream.
A straightforward gelatine mould, but the original leans on a quantity given in the recipe's headnote and on gelatine that behaved differently from what is sold now.
- The missing prunesThe ingredient list as printed omits the fruit itself. Use about 1/2 lb dried prunes, roughly 1 1/2 cups, which is what two cups of soaking water will comfortably cover.
- Half a box of gelatineBoxes of gelatine in this period held roughly an ounce, and the recipe itself equates half a box with the 2 1/2 tablespoons of granulated gelatine offered as the alternative. Modern envelopes are 1/4 oz each, about 2 1/4 teaspoons; two envelopes is rather less than 2 1/2 tablespoons, but modern gelatine is more consistent in strength and two should set the roughly 2 3/4 cups of total liquid firmly enough to unmould.
- Count all the liquidThe two cups of prune liquid plus the half cup used to soften the gelatine plus the lemon juice is what has to set, not two cups. If you want a spoonable rather than sliceable dessert, stay at two envelopes and no more.
- Dissolve, do not boilSoften the gelatine in cold water first, then stir it into the hot prune liquid off the heat until no grains remain on a spoon back. Boiling gelatine weakens the set.
- SugarA full cup is a nineteenth-century level of sweetness against fruit that is already sugary. Half that, tasted after the lemon juice goes in, suits most modern palates; the effect on the set is slight.
- The stirring instruction is the hingePrune quarters float or sink depending on density, and a mould left alone will set with all the fruit at one end. Chill until the jelly is the consistency of raw egg white, stir, let it thicken again, stir once more, then leave it alone.
- Chilling and unmouldingAllow four hours in the refrigerator, longer for a large mould. Dip the mould briefly in hot water and invert onto a chilled plate.
- YieldA quart or a little more, serving six. Sugar and cream, as the recipe directs, are still the right accompaniment.
Prunes were among the workhorse dried fruits of the American pantry when this book was compiled, cheap year-round, shipped in bulk from California orchards that had grown into a major industry by the turn of the century, and pressed into service for pies, puddings, whips and moulds. The dessert also reflects a technological shift: granulated gelatine sold by the box, which the recipe offers as an alternative to the older sheet or shred form, had become widely available only recently. Earlier cooks extracted their own from calf's feet or isinglass, laborious work with an uncertain result, which may be part of why so many nineteenth-century jelly recipes read as showpieces while this one reads as a way to use up a bag of prunes.