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Orange Jelly
Dissolve one and one-half ounces of gelatine in two gills of boiling water and strain it. Squeeze the juice out of a sufficient number of oranges to fill three teaoups, and sufficient lemons to fill one teacup; mix the juices together, strain them, and add to the dissolved gelatine. Sweeten to taste with loaf sugar, and boil the whole for a few minutes. Clarify the jelly with the whites of two eggs and their shells beaten together, and strain it through a jelly-bag. Rinse a mould out with cold water, pour the jelly into it, and leave until set and cold. When ready to serve, turn the jelly onto a fancy dish.
A moulded gelatin dessert of the sort that carried a Waldorf dinner between courses. The measurements are period ones, and the quantity of gelatine is deliberately high because the jelly has to stand up on a dish once turned out.
- Gills and teacupsTwo gills is one cup of boiling water. The period teacup was not standardised, and is variously reckoned at four to eight fluid ounces; taking the commonly cited six, three teacups of orange juice is roughly 2 1/4 cups (seven to nine oranges) and one teacup of lemon juice about 3/4 cup (four to six lemons).
- The gelatineOne and a half ounces is six 1/4-ounce envelopes of modern powdered gelatine for about a quart of liquid — roughly three times a soft dessert set. That is intentional: the jelly must unmould cleanly and slice. Bloom the powder in cold water first, then dissolve in the boiling water, or it will clump.
- Do not hard-boil itProlonged boiling weakens modern gelatine's set and cooks the fresh citrus flat. Bring it just to the point of clarifying and no further.
- Loaf sugarLoaf sugar was refined sugar broken from a cone, prized for purity in clear jellies. Granulated sugar is the direct substitute; figure 3/4 to 1 cup, tasting warm, since cold jelly reads less sweet.
- ClarifyingThe beaten whites and crushed shells form a raft that traps cloudiness as the liquid heats. Whisk them in while the mixture is still cool, heat without stirring, then ladle carefully through a scalded jelly bag or a double thickness of dampened muslin. Let it drip; squeezing pushes the sediment through.
- The mouldRinsing with cold water is what lets the jelly release. Chill at least four hours, better overnight, then dip the mould briefly in warm water and invert onto a wetted plate so the jelly can be nudged into position.
- YieldAbout a quart, serving six to eight.
Clear moulded jellies were a display dish long before packaged gelatine existed: the setting agent was isinglass or a stock boiled down from calf's feet, a day's work that made a trembling, transparent jelly a mark of a serious kitchen. By the time Oscar Tschirky was overseeing the Waldorf's dining rooms in the 1890s, sheet and granulated gelatines sold in the ounce had reduced that labor to an afternoon, which is why a recipe like this one measures gelatine by weight and says nothing about calf's feet. What survives from the older practice is the egg-white clarification and the jelly bag — steps that exist purely so the finished orange jelly will be brilliant rather than merely firm, since the whole point of turning it out onto a fancy dish was that light should pass through it.