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Cucumber Jelly Salad
1 pint grated cucumber
2 teaspoons cold water
Salt and paprika
6 halves of walnut-meats
2 tablespoons vinegar
Mayonnaise
1 tablespoon oil
Lettuce leaves
1 teaspoon gelatin
Peel cucumbers, removing most of the white as well as the green skin. Grate enough to give one pint and season with salt, paprika, vinegar and oil. Add gelatin mixed with cold water. Place over the fire until warm and well mixed, not boiled. In the bottom of individual molds put a half kernel of walnut, then pour in the cucumber mixture and set on the ice to cool. When ready to serve, turn each mold on to a nest of young lettuce leaves, and add a spoonful of mayonnaise.
A soft cucumber aspic from the era when granulated gelatin was still a novelty. Two things decide whether it works: how much water you get out of the cucumber, and how much gelatin goes back in.
- The gelatin is under-measured for modern powderOne teaspoon will not reliably set a pint of watery cucumber pulp. Contemporary powdered gelatin runs about 2¼ teaspoons (one 7 g envelope) per 2 cups of liquid, and you want the full envelope here, softened in a tablespoon or two of cold water rather than two teaspoons.
- Drain the cucumber firstGrated cucumber is mostly water, and unsalted pulp will weep in the mold. Salt the gratings lightly, let them stand 20 minutes in a sieve, then press gently and measure your pint after draining.
- Warm, never boilThe instruction to heat only until "warm and well mixed" is the hinge. Gelatin dissolves at about 105-115°F and loses setting power if held at a boil, and boiling also turns the fresh cucumber flavor cooked and dull.
- "Set on the ice"In this period this could mean the icebox or standing the molds directly on ice. Chill 3 to 4 hours, or until the jelly is firm to a fingertip; a soft-set aspic like this benefits from overnight.
- Molds and unmoldingIndividual molds means small cups or timbale molds of about 1/3 cup each; the walnut half sits in the bottom so it becomes the top when turned out. Rinse the molds with cold water before filling, and dip them briefly in warm water to release.
- PaprikaIn cookbooks of this period paprika generally meant a mild sweet paprika, used as much for color as for heat. Smoked paprika will overwhelm the cucumber.
- YieldSix molds, as the six walnut halves indicate — one small salad per person alongside a main course.
- The mayonnaiseHomemade mayonnaise in this period was raw-yolk. If you are serving anyone who should avoid raw egg, use a commercial mayonnaise made with pasteurized egg.
Cucumber jelly belongs to the first great age of American gelatin cookery. Granulated gelatin reached home kitchens in the 1890s, and within twenty years cookbooks were full of molded salads that would have been impossible when gelatin still meant boiling down calves' feet. Butterick, a pattern company whose household books were aimed at the fashion-conscious middle-class housewife, printed exactly the kind of recipe that signaled a modern table: individually molded, turned out onto lettuce, garnished with a single walnut half for effect. The salad course itself was still relatively new in American dining, and a cool pale-green jelly served with mayonnaise was understood as light, elegant, and faintly French — the ancestor of the far heavier congealed salads that would dominate mid-century church suppers.