Mexican Jelly
Peel four large cucumbers and cut in thin slices. Put in saucepan with one cup cold water, bring to boilingpoint, and cook slowly until soft; then force through a purée strainer. Add two and one-half tablespoons granulated gelatine dissolved in three-fourths cup boiling water, few drops onion juice, one tablespoon vinegar, few grains cayenne, and salt and pepper to taste. Color with leaf green, strain through cheese-cloth, and mould same as Fruit Chartreuse (see p. 423). After removing small mould fill space with Tomato Mayonnaise. Garnish sides of mould with thin slices of cucumber shaped with a small round fluted cutter , and on the centre of each slice place a circular piece of truffle. Garnish around base of mould with small tomatoes peeled, chilled, and cut in halves crosswise. On each slice of tomato place a circular fluted slice of cucumber, and over all a circular piece of truffle. Serve with Tomato Mayonnaise. Color mayonnaise red with tomato purée .
Egg Salad I Cut six "hard-boiled" eggs in halves crosswise, keeping whites in pairs. Remove yolks, and mash or put through a potato ricer. Add slowly enough Oil Dressing II to moisten. Make into balls the size of original yolks and refill whites. Arrange on a bed of lettuce, and pour Oil Dressing No. II around eggs.
A moulded cucumber jelly from the era when a chilled ring turned out whole was the mark of a serious salad course. Nothing here is difficult, but the set and the unmoulding are the whole dish.
- The hinge: get the gelatine rightTwo and a half tablespoons of granulated gelatine is roughly three envelopes (about 21 g), setting perhaps three cups of liquid — a firm, sliceable jelly rather than a soft one, which is what a tall mould needs. Soften it in cold water first for five minutes, then dissolve in the boiling water; adding dry granules straight to hot liquid gives you lumps that the cheesecloth will not save.
- "Leaf green"A commercial vegetable colouring sold in bottles alongside cochineal and caramel. Any modern green food colouring does the same job, and a few drops go a long way — cooked cucumber purée is already a dull olive, so the colour is cosmetic. It can be left out entirely.
- Mould same as Fruit ChartreuseThat means lining a large mould with a thin set layer of jelly, standing a smaller mould inside while the outer jelly sets, then removing the inner mould and filling the cavity — here with tomato mayonnaise. A ring mould gives a similar hollow-centred result with far less trouble. Rinse the mould in cold water before filling and it will release cleanly.
- Onion juiceMade by grating an onion and pressing the pulp, or halving one and pressing it against a reamer. A quarter teaspoon of grated onion pressed through a fine sieve is the same thing; do not substitute onion powder, which clouds the jelly.
- Truffle roundsPurely decorative, and a common flourish on company salads of the period. Black olive punched with the same cutter reads almost identically at the table for a fraction of the price.
- Chilling timeNo time is given. Allow at least four hours in the refrigerator, and overnight if the mould is deep. Unmould by dipping the outside in warm water for five or six seconds, no longer.
- YieldFour large cucumbers and three cups of jelly make a mould serving six to eight as a salad course.
- Two recipes on one pageThe text runs straight from the jelly into Egg Salad I with no break — an artifact of the original page layout. The eggs are a separate dish: six hard-cooked eggs halved crosswise, yolks riced with oil dressing, reshaped and returned to the whites.
Elaborate moulded salads like this belong to the high period of American gelatine cookery, roughly the 1890s through the 1920s, when packaged granulated gelatine replaced the day-long business of boiling calves' feet and put a chartreuse mould within reach of any household with an icebox. Such moulds were valued partly for the work they showed: a lined mould, a hollow centre, cutters, truffle rounds and a separate dressing all for one course. The "Mexican" of the title appears to have nothing to do with Mexican cooking; it may be no more than a nod to the cayenne and tomato that season and colour the dish, though that is a guess.