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Macaroons (Dissolve gelatine in boiling)
Dissolve gelatine in boiling water, add sugar, and as soon as dissolved set bowl containing mixture in pan of ice-water; then add whites of eggs and vanilla and beat until mixture thickens. Turn into a shallow pan, first dipped in cold water, and let stand until thoroughly chilled. Remove from pan and cut in pieces the size and shape of marshmallows; then roll in macaroons which have been dried and rolled. Serve with sugar and cream.
TOASTED MARSHMALLOWS. - Page 422.
ROYAL DIPLOMATIC PUDDING. - Page 430.
CHARLOTTE RUSSE. - Page 427.
ORANGE TRIFLE GARNISHED WITH WHIPPED CREAM, CANDIED ORANGE PEEL, AND BLOSSOMS. - Page 427.
Pudding à la Macédoine Make fruit or wine jelly mixture. Place a mould in pan of ice-water, pour in mixture one-half inch deep; when firm, decorate with slices of banana from which radiate thin strips of figs (seed side down), cover fruit, adding mixture by spoonfuls lest the fruit be disarranged. When firm, add more fruit and mixture; repeat until all is used, each time allowing mixture to stiffen before fruit is added. In preparing this dish various fruits may be used: oranges, bananas, dates, figs, and English walnuts. Serve with Cream Sauce I.
This is an uncooked gelatine-and-egg-white confection of the sort the book calls a homemade marshmallow, followed by a moulded fruit jelly. Both lean on details the page no longer supplies, and the first has a problem that cannot be worked around by adjusting technique.
- Raw egg white is the whole structureThe whites are whipped into gelatine slackened in boiling water and then chilled over ice; nothing in the sequence brings the egg to a temperature that would kill Salmonella, and the mixture is chilled and eaten as is. Modern marshmallow recipes generally pour a hot sugar syrup cooked to the firm-ball stage into the whites, which does heat them. Use a modern recipe.
- No quantities surviveThe instructions begin mid-thought with "dissolve gelatine in boiling water" and never state how much gelatine, water, sugar or how many whites. Gelatine setting strength is the one thing in a marshmallow you cannot estimate, so the proportions cannot be reconstructed by eye.
- Gelatine of the periodGelatine of this era came in sheets or as a granulated product that was soaked before use, and its strength varied between brands. Modern powdered gelatine is bloomed in cold liquid first and will not necessarily correspond spoon for spoon to what the book assumed.
- "Roll in macaroons which have been dried and rolled"This means almond macaroons — the crisp meringue-and-almond biscuit, not the coconut kind and not French macarons — dried out in a slow oven and crushed to crumbs with a rolling pin. The crumb coating stands in for the cornstarch and icing sugar dusting used today.
- Shallow pan dipped in cold waterWetting the tin was a common release trick in recipes of this kind. It works for firm jellies; for a sticky aerated mixture it is likely to be less reliable.
- Pudding à la Macédoine: the technique that mattersThe second recipe is sound in principle. Its hinge is adding each layer of jelly by the spoonful over the arranged fruit, and letting every layer set before the next goes on, or the decoration floats out of place. "Macédoine" simply means a mixture of cut fruits or vegetables.
- Cream Sauce IThe cross-reference is presumably to a sweet cream sauce elsewhere in the book rather than a savoury white sauce, though the page itself does not say. Lightly sweetened whipped or pouring cream serves the same purpose.
Marshmallow began as a medicinal lozenge made from the mucilaginous root of Althaea officinalis, the marsh mallow, whipped with sugar and egg white; by the late nineteenth century gelatine had largely displaced the root, and what survived was the name and the texture. This book sits at that turn, offering the confection as something a household could make in a shallow pan rather than buy, and dressing it in macaroon crumbs. The moulded fruit jelly beside it reflects the same interest in gelatine desserts, which commercial gelatine and a supply of ice brought within reach of a home cook.