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Orange Jelly in Ambush
Cut oranges in halves lengthwise, remove pulp and juice. With juice make Orange Jelly to fill half the pieces. Fill remaining pieces with Charlotte Russe mixture. When both are firm, put together in pairs and tie together with narrow white ribbon.
Bavarian Cream (Quick) 1½ lemon, grated rind and juice ½ cup white wine 1/3 cup sugar 2 eggs 1 teaspoon granulated gelatine 1 tablespoon cold water Mix lemon, wine, sugar, and yolks of eggs; stir vigorously over fire until mixture thickens, add gelatine soaked in water, then pour over whites of eggs beaten stiff. Set in pan of ice-water and beat until thick enough to hold its shape. Turn into a mould lined with lady fingers, and chill. Orange juice may be used in place of wine, and the cream served in orange baskets.
Two linked preparations: a stuffed-orange assembly that depends entirely on cross-references, and a small wine custard set with gelatine. The Bavarian is the part that needs attention.
- The hinge: cook the yolks, don't scramble them"Stir vigorously over fire" means a double boiler or a heavy pan over low heat, whisking constantly to about 170-175F, until the mixture coats a spoon. Wine and citrus juice make the yolks curdle readily, so pull it the moment it thickens.
- Gelatine measureOne teaspoon of granulated gelatine is well under a modern envelope (a ¼-oz packet is about 2¼ teaspoons). It is deliberately light — this is a soft, spoonable cream stabilised mostly by beaten whites and cold, not a firm moulded jelly. If you want it to unmould cleanly, expect to increase it.
- Raw whitesThe stiff whites are only warmed by the hot custard poured over them, not cooked. Use pasteurized whites, or powdered egg white reconstituted, if serving to anyone who should avoid raw egg.
- Beating over ice"Set in pan of ice-water and beat until thick enough to hold its shape" is the whole texture of the dish. Beat continuously as it chills; if it sets in the bowl before you beat it, it turns rubbery and will not fold smoothly into the lady-finger mould.
- White wineThe recipe calls simply for white wine; a dry to off-dry white suits it. (Sherry or Madeira are fortified and would be a substitution of your own, not the book's instruction.) Half a cup in a two-egg custard is assertive; the orange-juice substitution the recipe offers is not a lesser version, just a different dessert.
- Lady fingersLine the mould with the flat sides in and the rounded sides against the metal, trimming to fit tightly. Commercial savoiardi are drier and firmer than the soft home-baked lady fingers of 1896 and hold up better.
- Orange shells and basketsHalve the oranges lengthwise, juice them, then scrape the membranes out with a spoon so the shells sit steady. Thick-skinned navels work; thin-skinned juice oranges collapse. "Orange baskets" means a shell with a strip of peel left arching over as a handle.
- Assembling the ambushBoth fillings must be fully set — several hours in the refrigerator — before you press the jelly half and the cream half together and tie them. Chill the assembled oranges until served; they cut cleanly with a serrated knife.
- YieldThe recipe gives no yield. The two-egg mixture is small, probably about four servings in a small mould; if you use four oranges you get eight halves, or four tied pairs.
"In ambush" is an older kitchen term for a filling concealed inside a shell or crust -- nineteenth-century books offer chicken, sweetbreads or oysters in ambush, hidden in hollowed bread rolls and sent to table looking like nothing in particular. Fannie Farmer's version keeps the joke and moves it to dessert: an orange that has been emptied, filled with two different set creams, and tied up with ribbon so the guest finds jelly on one side and charlotte russe on the other. It belongs to the ornamental end of the 1896 Boston Cooking-School Cook Book, where cold desserts were judged as much on presentation as flavour, and where a household with an ice supply could show it off. The Bavarian appended here is the "quick" kind -- no scalded milk, no long-cooked custard, just yolks beaten over heat with wine and citrus, lightened with whites and set with a token spoonful of gelatine.