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Orange Baskets
When the pulp of oranges is to be served in small pieces, or the juice alone used, cut the peel in the form of baskets with a handle half an inch wide, and with a spoon carefully remove the pulp.
Put the baskets at once into cold water and they will keep fresh for several days. Use them for serving orange sponge, lemon jelly, or a fruit blanc mange. An orange sponge may be attractively served to an invalid in this way. For the sponge take the juice of a medium-sized orange, strain it, add two teaspoonfuls of sugar, and stir until dissolved. Add two teaspoonfuls of cold water to one teaspoonful of granulated gelatine. When softened melt over hot water and add to the orangejuice with a few drops of lemon-juice. Set on ice until it begins to harden around the edge of the bowl, then beat with a Dover beater until the mass is thick and spongy. Chill again and pile lightly in the orange basket after it has been well dried.
Two things in one entry: a technique for turning spent orange shells into serving cups, and a small whipped gelatin dessert to fill them. Both are straightforward, but the timing of the beating is what decides whether you get sponge or jelly.
- The hinge: catch the gelatin at the right momentBeat when the mixture has just begun to set at the rim of the bowl and is the consistency of raw egg white. Too soon and it stays liquid; too late and it breaks into rubbery lumps that will not aerate. If it firms up past that point, warm the bowl briefly over hot water to loosen it and chill again.
- Dover beaterA hand-cranked rotary egg beater; the brand name stood in for the whole class of tool. A handheld electric mixer on medium does the same job in a minute or two, and a balloon whisk works with more effort.
- Granulated gelatineModern powdered gelatin behaves the same way. One teaspoon is roughly a third of a standard 1/4-oz envelope, about 2.5 g. Two teaspoons of water is a scant bloom for that amount — add a third if the powder is not uniformly wet before you melt it.
- "Set on ice"A refrigerator does this. Expect 20 to 30 minutes in a shallow bowl before the edges begin to thicken, less if you set the bowl in a larger bowl of ice water and stir occasionally.
- Cutting the basketsScore the handle and the two crescents to be removed all the way through the peel before lifting anything out, and work with a paring knife rather than a spoon at that stage. A grapefruit spoon clears the pulp cleanly. The cold-water soak keeps the peel from drying and curling.
- Dry them properlyWater clinging inside the shell will thin the sponge where it touches. Drain the baskets upside down and blot the interior before filling.
- YieldOne orange gives one basket and roughly 1/4 to 1/3 cup of juice, which whips up to fill that basket generously. Scale one orange per person and expect to make it a few hours ahead at most.
- Fruit blanc mangeIn this period the term covers a pudding set with cornstarch, gelatin or Irish moss, usually milk- or cream-based but sometimes made with fruit juice in place of the milk. Any firm panna cotta or cornstarch pudding fills the shells the same way.
This entry shows the logic of a whole genre: the oranges have already been used for juice or for a salad, and the peel is the thing being rescued. Hollowed citrus shells as serving vessels are much older than this book — they turn up in European confectionery and ice work well before 1900 — but the specific mention of an invalid places it in another tradition, the sickroom cookery that was commonly given its own chapter in American household manuals of the era. Food for the sick was expected to be light, cold, mildly acid and above all appetising to look at, since a patient with no hunger might still be tempted by something pretty; a whipped orange sponge served in its own peel meets every one of those requirements. The Dover beater named in the instructions was the standard American rotary egg beater of the period, common enough by then that writers used the name generically.