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Raisin Eggs
1 ounce (2 tablespoons) gran- 3 tablespoons lemon-juice ulated gelatin
2½ cups pineapple-juice and
½ cup cold water
½ cup boiling water
1 cup steamed and chopped pulp raisins
¼ cup sugar
Follow directions on package for making jelly. When it is beginning to set, add the raisins. Pour into molds the shape of half firm, eggs or into large spoons and place in a cold place until eggs by then remove from the molds and form into the shape of eggs by putting halves together with a little soft gelatin. Let stand in a cold place to stiffen.
The ingredient list has come through the scanner jumbled, but the dish is simple: a pineapple-lemon jelly, set with raisins through it, moulded into halves and joined into eggs. One point decides whether it works at all.
- Use canned or cooked pineapple juiceFresh pineapple juice contains bromelain, which digests gelatin and leaves you with syrup that never sets. Canned or bottled juice has been heated enough to destroy the enzyme; if you press your own, bring it to a boil and cool it before using.
- The scrambled ingredient listRead down the columns and it resolves to: 1 ounce (2 tablespoons) granulated gelatin, 1/2 cup cold water, 1/2 cup boiling water, 1/4 cup sugar, 3 tablespoons lemon juice, 2 1/2 cups pineapple juice, 1 cup steamed and chopped raisins.
- Gelatin quantity is genuinely inconsistentAn ounce of modern granulated gelatin works out to about 3 tablespoons (roughly four quarter-ounce envelopes), not 2, so the book's own equivalence cannot be reconciled with today's product, and period gelatin may not have set as strongly as the modern standardised powder. Around 2 to 2 1/2 envelopes (about 5 to 6 teaspoons) will firmly set roughly 3 1/2 cups of liquid, and firm is what you need here.
- "Follow directions on package"The period method: soften the gelatin in the cold water for five minutes, dissolve it in the boiling water with the sugar, then stir in the lemon and pineapple juice.
- Steamed raisinsSteaming plumps them and keeps them from drawing moisture out of the jelly. Ten minutes over simmering water is enough; drain and chop them, and let them cool before they go in.
- Adding the fruit at the right momentWait until the jelly is the consistency of raw egg white. Any earlier and the raisins sink into a layer at the bottom of each mould, which shows badly once the halves are turned out.
- MouldsEgg-shaped moulds are uncommon now. Large serving spoons, as the recipe suggests, work well, as do the halves of plastic snap-together egg forms or small oval ramekins. Rinse them in cold water first so the jelly releases.
- Joining the halvesKeep back a few tablespoons of the jelly at room temperature to use as glue, and chill the assembled eggs at least an hour before serving so the seam holds. Unmould by dipping the forms for a second or two in warm water.
- YieldAbout 3 1/2 cups of jelly; the number of eggs depends entirely on the size of the mould, and with spoon-sized halves it will run to more than a dozen.
Egg-shaped desserts belong to the Easter table, and this one is a good example of what a well-stocked American pantry could do around 1900: pineapple juice, packaged granulated gelatin, and raisins, the year-round fruit of every household. Gelatin had shifted within a generation from a laborious kitchen extraction, boiling calves' feet and clarifying the result, to a measured powder sold by the envelope, and cookbooks responded with whole chapters of moulded desserts of exactly this kind. Butterick, better known for dress patterns, also published household books, and the appeal of the recipe is visual rather than gastronomic — an inexpensive sweet that looks like something when it comes to the table. The instruction to mould in large spoons suggests special forms were not to be assumed, and that the ingenuity was expected to come from the cook.