No. 3130

Baskets of Oranges with Jelly

Paniers d'Oranges a la Gelee

Select twelve even-sized oranges, cut them into basket shapes, leaving a handle on the center; empty them with a vegetable spoon (Fig. 91) and around them make a small border, scoring the peel with a knife or small punch made for this purpose (see Andalusian Sherbet, No. 2321); plunge these into boiling water for a minute; remove at once and throw them into cold water to refresh, then suppress all the inside white skin so that the jelly cannot acquire any of its bitterness. Stand them upright on a baking sheet covered with chopped ice and as soon as cold fill them with orange jelly (No. 3180), but slightly thickened and colored with a little carmine; put the sheet and its contents into the ice-box so that the jelly stiffens thoroughly. Dress on a folded napkin or on a stand and trim the handles with variegated ribbons.

← No. 3129 Basket of Nougat with Cream Cold Entremets — Creams, Jellies & Charlottes No. 3131 Chocolate Bavarois →

For the Modern Kitchen

This is a garde-manger showpiece rather than a dessert recipe: the work is all in the carving and the chilling, and the jelly itself is made elsewhere in the book (No. 3180). Read the whole thing before you cut the first orange.

The hinge: strip the pithRanhofer is explicit that every trace of white skin must be scraped from the inside of the shell, and he is right. Pith left in place leaches bitterness into the jelly as it sets, and no amount of sugar hides it. Blanching for a minute loosens it; a small spoon or a melon baller takes it off cleanly.
Cutting the basketsRanhofer says only to cut them into basket shapes with a handle left across the center. One workable reading: two parallel cuts down from the top, stopping short of the middle, leave a strip across the center as the handle, and the two quarter-domes on either side lift out. Thick-skinned navel oranges hold a handle better than thin-skinned juicing types.
"A vegetable spoon"The tool at Fig. 91 appears to be a small scoop of the ball-cutter type. Any small ball cutter or grapefruit spoon does the job.
Scoring the borderThe "small punch made for this purpose" was a small hand tool for cutting a decorative pattern into the rind; exactly which is not clear from the text. A modern channel knife or a fine V-gouge will cut the same sort of shallow decorative border.
Orange jelly, slightly thickenedNo. 3180 is a sweetened orange juice jelly set with gelatine. "Slightly thickened" most likely means cooling the jelly until it just begins to set before filling, so it does not run through any nick in the shell. Ranhofer gives no quantities, and none can be inferred from this page.
CarmineThe period colorant was cochineal-based carmine, still sold as a food color. A few drops of any red gel or liquid color gives the intended pale coral tint; a heavy hand turns the jelly opaque and loses the point.
Chopped ice and the ice-boxThe bed of ice is there to chill the shells fast and hold them upright. A rimmed sheet of crushed ice works, or set the oranges in the cups of a muffin tin to keep them level. "Ice-box" here is the period ice chest; a refrigerator is the modern equivalent. Give the jelly several hours to stiffen thoroughly, and overnight is safer.
Yield and serviceTwelve baskets, dressed as a cold entremets at the end of a long menu. Ranhofer specifies a folded napkin or a stand and variegated ribbons on the handles; both are presentation, and he says nothing about when the ribbons go on.

A Little History

Charles Ranhofer ran the kitchen at Delmonico's in New York, and The Epicurean (1894) is essentially his working archive from that job — upwards of three thousand numbered items cross-referenced to one another, as here, where the jelly comes from No. 3180 and the rind-scoring technique from a sherbet recipe hundreds of pages away. Fruit shells used as serving vessels were a staple of nineteenth-century high-service cookery, prized because they let the pantry send out something that looked wrought and architectural without any hot work at the last moment; the same logic produced hollowed melons, pineapple shells and the frozen fruits filled with their own sorbet that still appear on dessert menus. The basket with a handle carved from the rind is often said to be a garde-manger conceit, and Ranhofer's instruction to trim the handles with variegated ribbon places the dish squarely in the age of the elaborate buffet, where a cold entremets was as much table decoration as food.