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Orange Jelly
1/2 box gelatine or 1½ cups boiling water 2 tablespoons granulated 1 cup sugar gelatine 1½ cups orange juice 1/2 cup cold water 3 tablespoons lemon juice Make same as Lemon Jelly.
To Remove Juice from Oranges. Cut fruit in halves crosswise, remove with spoon pulp and juice from sections, and strain through double cheese-cloth; or use a glass lemon lemon squeezer.
The ingredient list has come through the scanner as scrambled parallel columns; read it as two alternatives for the gelatine plus the liquids. Untangled, it is: 1/2 box gelatine or 2 tablespoons granulated gelatine; 1/2 cup cold water; 1 1/2 cups boiling water; 1 cup sugar; 1 1/2 cups orange juice; 3 tablespoons lemon juice.
- Gelatine measuresA "box" of gelatine in this period is usually reckoned at an ounce or so, and the recipe itself treats half a box and 2 tablespoons of granulated gelatine as interchangeable. That is roughly two of today's 1/4-oz envelopes.
- Method from Lemon JellySoften the gelatine in the 1/2 cup cold water (the page gives no time; long enough for it to swell), pour on the boiling water with the sugar and stir until both are fully dissolved, then add the strained orange and lemon juice. Strain the whole into a wetted mold.
- Never boil the gelatineGelatine dissolves well below boiling, and prolonged hard boiling can weaken its setting power, so the boiling water goes onto the softened gelatine off the heat and is stirred, not simmered.
- Strain, or the jelly cloudsThe double cheesecloth in the note is not fussiness — orange pulp and membrane suspended in the liquid turn a clear jelly murky and give it a slightly bitter edge. Strain the juice, and strain again after the sugar syrup is added.
- Sweetness has movedTaste the mixture before molding; with sweet modern juice you may want only 3/4 cup sugar, and the lemon juice is what keeps it from tasting flat.
- ChillingThe book assumes an icebox. Four to six hours in a refrigerator will set it firm; overnight is better for a shaped mold, which needs to be quite firm to turn out.
- UnmoldingDip the mold briefly in warm water and loosen the top edge with a fingertip rather than a knife. If you want insurance, oil the mold lightly instead of wetting it.
- YieldAbout a quart of jelly — six to eight servings. It is a plain-set jelly, so it wants cream, custard sauce or plain sugared fruit alongside.
- One modern pitfallDo not substitute fresh pineapple, kiwi, papaya or ginger juice for part of the orange. Their proteases digest gelatine and the dessert will never set.
Clear moulded fruit jellies were a marker of a well-run kitchen in the second half of the nineteenth century, and they got much easier just as this book was being written. Before commercial granulated gelatine, a cook made her own jelly stock by boiling calves' feet or isinglass and clarifying it with egg white, a long labor for one dessert; the appearance of packaged sheet and granulated gelatine turned it into an afternoon's work. The inclusion of both forms in a single ingredient line — "1/2 box" or "2 tablespoons granulated" — catches the transition mid-stride, when either might be on the shelf. The careful note on extracting orange juice belongs to the same moment: the Boston Cooking School's whole pedagogy rested on spelling out the small mechanical steps that older cookbooks had left to a cook's experience.