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Oranges in Jelly
Boil the smallest-sized oranges in water until a straw will easily penetrate them, clarify half a pound of sugar for each pound of fruit, cut in halves or quarters, and put them to the syrup, set over a slow fire until the fruit is clear; then stir into it an ounce or more of dissolved isinglass, and let it boil for a short time longer. Before taking it up try the jelly, and if it is not thick enough add more isinglass, first taking out the oranges into a deep glass dish, and then straining the jelly over them. Lemons may be prepared in the same manner.
A candied-orange-in-jelly dessert of the sort that dressed a Victorian sideboard. Nothing here is difficult, but two of the ingredients — isinglass and clarified sugar — need translating before you start.
- IsinglassDried swim bladder of sturgeon and other fish, used as the setting agent before commercial gelatin was cheap. Powdered or leaf gelatin does the same job; an ounce of isinglass is not a straight swap for an ounce of gelatin, so set by test rather than by weight.
- Clarified sugarHere it means a syrup: dissolve the sugar in a little water, bring it to a boil and skim the scum, traditionally with beaten egg white to carry off impurities. Modern refined sugar throws almost no scum, so a plain simmered syrup is all that is needed.
- The proportionHalf a pound of sugar per pound of fruit; the recipe does not say at what stage the fruit is weighed. Add only enough water to dissolve the sugar — roughly a cup per pound is the usual working figure — since excess water will leave the jelly thin and slow to set.
- Boiling the whole fruitSmall thick-skinned oranges can need the better part of an hour before a straw goes through the peel; go by the test rather than the clock. Change the water once or twice if the pith is very bitter, as Sevilles and other marmalade oranges may require; sweet eating oranges usually do not.
- Slow fireA bare simmer, no more. The fruit should go translucent gradually; a hard boil breaks it up and clouds the syrup.
- Do not boil hard after the setting agent goes inAfter the setting agent goes in -- The recipe directs only a short boil at this stage. Prolonged hard boiling weakens gelatin, so keep the final boil brief and at a bare simmer.
- Testing the jellyChill a spoonful on a cold saucer for a few minutes; it should wobble and hold a finger track. The recipe has you test and add more isinglass before the fruit is lifted out and the jelly strained, which is easier than remelting a soft set afterwards.
- Assembly and yieldAssembly -- Arrange the fruit in the glass dish first, strain the hot jelly over through a fine sieve or damp cloth, and chill several hours until firm.
Isinglass was one of the household setting agents in use through the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, alongside calf's-foot jelly and hartshorn, sold in sheets or shreds and dissolved slowly in warm water; it is still used to fine beer and wine. Recipes like this one belong to the long tradition of preserved and clear-jellied fruit that filled the dessert course of a formal dinner, where the point was as much the glitter of the dish as the flavour. The Dixie Cook-Book (1883), substantially an adaptation of the earlier Buckeye Cookery material for a Southern market and reprinted for decades, gathers a good many such set-pieces alongside its plainer everyday cooking. That the recipe calls for the smallest oranges is probably practical: small fruit presumably softens through evenly and looks better whole or halved in the glass. The closing line — that lemons may be done the same way — is typical of the period's habit of giving one method and letting the cook extend it.