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Jelly Whip
3 tablespoonfuls any 1 teaspoonful gelatine tart jelly 3 egg whites 1 teaspoonful gelatine 4 tablespoonfuls rolled macaroons teaspoonful lemon- A little salt juice Soak the gelatine in one tablespoonful of cold water ten minutes, and then melt over hot water.
Add the jelly and salt to the unbeaten whites and beat stiff with a Dover beater, adding the lemonjuice and gelatine gradually. Fold in two tablespoonfuls of the macaroons and set away to chill. Put a tablespoonful of any juicy fresh or canned fruit' in small glasses, pile the whip lightly on top, and sprinkle with the remainder of the macaroons.
This is an uncooked meringue: the whites are beaten raw with jelly and gelatine, chilled, and served. Nothing in the method brings the egg anywhere near a temperature that would make it safe.
- Raw egg white, never heatedThe whites go into the bowl unbeaten and straight from the shell, and the only warm ingredient is a spoonful of melted gelatine that is beaten into a cold mass. Salmonella can be present inside intact, clean eggs, and chilling does nothing to it.
- The gelatine does not helpSetting an uncooked foam with gelatine gives it structure but no protection. The mixture then sits in the cold for hours, which is a holding step, not a kill step. If you want a fruit whip today, use a current recipe built on pasteurised whites or a cooked Italian-meringue base.
- "Any tart jelly"Currant, crabapple or quince jelly is meant here, the firm strained preserve of the period, not a gelatine dessert. Its acidity is what gives the whip its edge against the sweetness of the macaroons.
- Rolled macaroonsDry almond macaroons crushed with a rolling pin into coarse crumbs. Period macaroons were much drier than the modern French macaron and were kept on hand precisely for crumbling into puddings and charlottes.
- Dover beaterThe hand-cranked rotary egg beater patented in the 19th century and standard in American kitchens by 1900. It is specified because it whips whites faster than a fork or a wire whisk, which mattered when a mixture had to be stiff before the gelatine set.
- YieldThe recipe gives no yield, but three whites with a couple of tablespoonfuls of additions should fill roughly four to six small glasses, in line with the individual service the recipe describes.
Whips, snows and sponges were the thrifty end of the dessert repertoire: a little fruit or jelly stretched with egg white into something that looked lavish and cost almost nothing. Any tart jelly and any juicy fresh or canned fruit would serve. Uncooked meringue desserts of this sort were commonplace in English and American household cookery through the 19th century and well into the 20th, and became less common in print as the link between shell eggs and salmonella came to be widely understood in the later 20th century.