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Lemon Jelly
Soak one-half box of gelatine in one-half cup of cold water for twenty minutes. Dissolve in two and one-half cups of boiling water, add one cup of sugar and the juice and grated rind of two and one-half lemons. Strain and mold. Serve with boiled custard sauce.
A plain molded gelatine dessert of the sort that carried nearly every American cookbook of the 1890s and 1900s. The proportions are firmer than modern jelly because it has to stand up out of the mold and be sliced.
- How much gelatineA "box" of granulated gelatine in this period was commonly two ounces, so half a box is about one ounce — roughly four modern quarter-ounce envelopes. The figure is not certain across brands, so if your jelly must unmold cleanly, err toward the full ounce for the three-plus cups of liquid here.
- Soaking is not optionalTwenty minutes in cold water lets the granules swell before heat hits them. Gelatine dropped straight into boiling water clumps and leaves gritty strings that never dissolve.
- Do not boil after the gelatine goes inThe recipe says dissolve in boiling water; this is usually read as water just off the boil poured over the softened gelatine. Prolonged boiling can weaken the set.
- Add lemon off the heatJuice and zest go in after the gelatine is dissolved, as written. Long heat drives off the volatile oils in the rind, which are the whole point of the dish.
- Strain seriouslyStraining removes the grated rind and any undissolved gelatine and is what makes the jelly clear rather than cloudy. Use a fine sieve lined with damp cheesecloth and let it drip rather than pressing it through.
- The moldRinse the mold with cold water and leave it wet; do not oil it. Chill four to six hours, or overnight for a large mold. To turn out, dip the mold in warm water for a few seconds and invert onto a wet plate so the jelly can be slid into place.
- YieldAbout 3 1/2 to 4 cups once the sugar and lemon juice are added, which fills a one-quart mold and serves six.
- The sauceBoiled custard sauce means a stirred custard — milk, egg yolks and sugar cooked to about 170-175F, thick enough to coat a spoon. It was usually served cold.
Lemon jelly belongs to the moment when gelatine stopped being a luxury. Through most of the nineteenth century a clear jelly meant hours of boiling calves' feet or isinglass and repeated clarifying with egg white, which is why molded jellies signaled a household with staff. Commercially packaged gelatine, sold by the box and increasingly common through the later nineteenth century, reduced that labor to a twenty-minute soak, and cookbooks responded with page after page of molded creams, snows, Bavarians and fruit jellies aimed at cooks working without help. The dish itself is deliberately austere — water, sugar, lemon, gelatine — and its virtue was visual: a translucent shape on a glass dish, with a pale custard poured around it for contrast.