No. 3180

Orange Jelly in Cups

Gelee d'Orange en Tasses

Put four or five gills of sweet, clarified, liquid jelly (No. 106) into a bowl; when quite cold mix in with it the juice of three or four oranges filtered through filtering paper spread on a sieve; add two or three drops of liquid clarified carmine and incrust the vessel in chopped ice. Stir the jelly with a spoon until it is half set, then mix in with it two or three spoonfuls of candied orange peel cut in very small dice; stir again for two minutes, and with a spoon fill up some very cold small cups; keep these for twenty minutes on ice before serving.

← No. 3179 Macedoine Jelly with Champagne Cold Entremets — Creams, Jellies & Charlottes No. 3181 Rose Jelly →

For the Modern Kitchen

A clear orange jelly set soft in individual cups, tinted faintly pink and studded with candied peel. Everything depends on catching the jelly at the half-set stage so the diced peel stays suspended instead of sinking.

GillsA gill is half a cup, so four or five gills is 2 to 2 1/2 cups of liquid jelly. With the orange juice added you will have close to 3 cups; the recipe does not say how many cups it fills.
The jelly of No. 106Ranhofer's base is a clarified, sweetened liquid jelly, cross-referenced rather than described here. For a modern equivalent use about 2 1/2 cups of sweetened water or light syrup set with roughly 1 tablespoon of powdered gelatine — soft enough to eat with a spoon, not a moulded jelly that must stand up.
Acid and setCitrus juice weakens gelatin, and three or four oranges is a lot of juice for this quantity. Err on the firm side with the gelatine in the base, and taste the mixture cold, since sweetness reads flatter at ice temperature.
Filtering the juiceThe filter paper on a sieve is there for clarity, not hygiene. A paper coffee filter does the same job; let it drip rather than pressing, or you push pulp through and cloud the jelly.
Liquid carmineCarmine is cochineal, an insect-derived red still sold as carmine or cochineal extract. Two or three drops is meant to give the barest blush; anyone avoiding insect colorings can use a drop of beet or berry juice, and note that carmine is a recognized allergen for a small number of people.
"Incrust the vessel in chopped ice"Bury the bowl in ice, not the jelly. A metal bowl set in a larger bowl of ice and a little water chills fastest, and constant stirring is what brings the jelly to the syrupy half-set point.
The hingeAdd the candied peel only when the jelly has thickened enough to hold a trail from the spoon. Too early and the dice sink to the bottom of every cup; too late and the jelly sets in ropes you cannot pour smoothly.
Chilling timeTwenty minutes on ice suited a kitchen where the jelly was already nearly set and the cups were pre-chilled. In a domestic refrigerator, allow two hours or more, and chill the cups first.

A Little History

This is No. 3180 in Charles Ranhofer's The Epicurean (1894), the enormous record of his cooking at Delmonico's in New York, where jellies and creams filled the entremets course served cold near the end of a long dinner. The recipe also shows how much of that kitchen's effort went into appearance — the juice filtered through paper for brilliance, then a couple of drops of carmine for tint.