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Orange Charlotte
Line a charlotte-mould with sections of oranges. Put one-third ounce of gelatine into a basin with a little less than a teacupful of water, let it soak until soft, then pour over about the same quantity of boiling water and add eight ounces of sugar and the juice of a lemon. Pass it through a sieve into another basin and add the pulp and juice of sufficient oranges to make one-half pint of it; add a little of the grated rind of an orange and pack the basin in ice to cool. Beat the whites of three eggs to a stiff froth and when the orange mixture begins to thicken add them and beat until it is thick enough to drop from the whisk. Pour it into the mould, pack it in ice, and when set and firm pour it out onto a glass dish, garnish round with crystalized orange flowers, and serve.
This is a cold gelatine dessert whose only protein set comes from raw egg white, folded in at the end and never heated at any point. That single step is what puts it out of reach; the rest of the notes explain the old measures for readers working through the book.
- Why it fails: the whites are never cookedThe gelatine is dissolved in boiling water, but that liquid is then sieved, loaded with cold orange pulp and juice, and packed in ice until it begins to thicken before the three raw whites go in. By then nothing in the bowl is anywhere near a temperature that would inactivate Salmonella, and the finished charlotte is served cold. Raw-white mousses and charlottes of this type are the classic vehicle for egg-borne illness.
- One-third ounce of gelatineRoughly 9-10 g, or about an envelope and a half of modern powdered gelatine. Sheet gelatine was also in use in this period and varies in bloom strength, so the original figure is not a reliable guide to modern setting power.
- A teacupfulGenuinely ambiguous: the period teacup was not a standardised measure and is variously reckoned from about a gill (4 fluid ounces) upwards, and the recipe asks for "a little less" of it, then "about the same quantity" again of boiling water. Treat the liquid quantities as approximate rather than exact.
- Eight ounces of sugarWeight, not volume, so a little over a cup of granulated sugar for half a pint of orange pulp and juice. That is a very sweet set by current taste, though the sugar also helps hold the beaten whites, even though here it is dissolved in the base rather than beaten into them.
- Charlotte-mouldA plain, straight-sided or slightly tapered metal mould, unmoulded onto a flat dish. Lining it with orange sections means laying them against the wall so they show through the jelly once it is turned out.
- Crystalized orange flowersCandied orange blossoms, a standard confectioner's garnish in the period and now a specialty import. Candied citrus peel or blanched zest strips fill the same decorative role on a modern table.
Oscar Tschirky's The Cook Book by "Oscar" of the Waldorf (1896) came out at the moment gelatine was shifting from a laborious kitchen project to a shelf product: cooks of an earlier generation boiled calves' feet or isinglass for hours to get a set, while commercially packaged sheet and powdered gelatine, sold in convenient fractions of an ounce, made cold moulded desserts a fixture of hotel and middle-class dining alike. The name charlotte attaches first to the English apple charlotte of the later eighteenth century, and the origin of the word itself is unsettled, a matter of folk tradition rather than established history; the charlotte russe is traditionally attributed to Carême. By Oscar's day the word had loosened to mean almost anything set in a charlotte mould and turned out whole, here with orange sections doing the lining that sponge fingers once did. Aerating a fruit jelly with beaten whites, the technique behind this dessert and its many cousins labelled snow, sponge or whip, made a small amount of fruit fill a large mould and arrive at the table pale, light and impressively tall.