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Orange Baskets
Cut two pieces from each orange, leaving what remains in shape of basket with handle, remove pulp from baskets and pieces, and keep baskets in ice-water until ready to fill. From orange juice make orange jelly with which to fill baskets. Serve garnished with Cream Sauce.
An assembly job rather than a cooked dish: the orange is a container, and the only real cooking is the jelly that goes inside. The whole thing stands or falls on how cleanly you cut the peel.
- Cutting the basketThe two pieces are presumably wedges cut from the top of the orange on either side of a central strip of peel, which becomes the handle; the recipe gives no dimensions. Cut through the peel only, then work the pulp free with a grapefruit knife or a teaspoon so the shell stays intact.
- Choose the right fruitThick-skinned navels hold their shape far better than thin-skinned juicing oranges. Pick fruit that sits flat, or shave a sliver off the base so the baskets do not roll on the plate.
- The ice-water soakThis is not idle; chilling firms the peel and keeps the cut edges from drying and curling before filling. An hour is plenty.
- Orange jelly means gelatineThe book's own orange jelly is granulated gelatine, sugar, boiling water, and the juice of oranges and a lemon. Period recipes call for a fraction of a "box"; the weight of a period box is not settled, so no exact modern-envelope equivalent can be given. A firm set is what you want in a shell that will be cut with a spoon.
- Strain and cool before fillingStrain the juice through a fine sieve to catch membrane, and let the jelly cool to lukewarm before pouring. Hot liquid softens the pith and can make the shells slump.
- Setting timeFour hours in the refrigerator, or overnight, with the baskets steadied in a muffin tin or egg carton so they sit upright.
- Cream SauceThe recipe cross-refers to the book's own Cream Sauce; look that entry up rather than assuming a sweetened cream or a thin egg custard.
- YieldOne basket per person. Two cups of jelly fills roughly six average orange shells, with a little left over to set in a cup for the cook.
Fruit shells used as serving vessels were a standing device of the late-nineteenth-century American table, where a dessert was judged as much on how it looked coming through the door as on how it tasted. The orange basket, with its carved handle, belongs to the same family as the melon carved into a basket for fruit salad and the halved orange filled with sherbet. What made it practical in the 1890s was commercial granulated gelatine, sold in boxes and reliable enough that a home cook could count on a firm set without boiling down calves' feet, and the Boston Cooking-School book leans on it heavily throughout the cold-dessert chapter. The recipe assumes you have already read the orange jelly entry, which is why it gives no quantities at all.