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Orange Cream
Make according to above rule, adding one gill of orange juice and the grated rind of one orange which has been previously soaked in the orange juice while the gelatine is dissolving over the boiling water, and the beaten yolks of two eggs when you take off, and quite hot.
This is a variation entry: it assumes you are working from the plain cream immediately above it in the book, a gelatine-and-cream mould of the sort now called a Bavarian cream. Read the two together before starting, and expect to supply your own quantities for the base.
- A gill of orange juiceA gill is half a cup, about 120 ml — roughly the juice of two medium oranges. Squeeze it fresh; the flavour is the whole point of the variation.
- The "above rule"The preceding recipe is not reproduced here, so the base has to be inferred. All this entry tells us is that gelatine is dissolved over boiling water; a cream of this period would normally also be sweetened and enriched with cream and set in a mould. If your edition's preceding recipe is not on the page, a standard Bavarian cream base -- about 1 tablespoon powdered gelatine, 1/2 cup sugar, 1 cup milk and 1 1/2 cups cream -- will stand in, but the quantities are a modern substitution, not the book's.
- Gelatine has changedNineteenth-century recipes commonly called for sheet gelatine or for coarse shreds given a long soak, and the strength of the product varied. One envelope of modern powdered gelatine (about 2 1/4 teaspoons) sets 2 cups of liquid to a spoonable cream; use slightly more if you intend to unmould it.
- Soak the rind in the juiceThis is not a throwaway direction. Zest sitting in the juice while the gelatine dissolves draws the citrus oils into the liquid, which carries far more orange flavour than zest stirred in at the end. Grate only the coloured layer.
- The yolks are the hingeThey go in off the heat, into a mixture that is still "quite hot," and they must not scramble. Whisk a ladle of the hot liquid into the beaten yolks first, then return the lot to the pan and stir over low heat until it thickens slightly and reaches about 170F. That also settles any concern about undercooked egg in a dessert that will only be chilled from here.
- Acid and setCitrus juice weakens gelatine slightly and can curdle dairy if the mixture is too hot or too acid. Add the juice after the gelatine is fully dissolved, keep the mixture below a simmer, and stir constantly as the two meet.
- ChillingIf your base folds in whipped cream, cool the mixture over ice until it mounds on the spoon first, or the cream will float and set as a separate layer. Then at least four hours in the mould, or overnight.
- YieldWorking from the substitute base above, about 2 1/2 cups of liquid will fill a 1-quart mould and serve six to eight; the original gives no quantities from which to calculate this.
The Home Cook Book belongs to the compiled charity cookbook, a genre that took hold in North America from the 1860s Sanitary Fair volumes onward and flourished in the 1870s, in which named contributors from a church or hospital committee each gave a favourite receipt and the profits went to the cause. That helps explain the shape of this entry: it is a short variation appended to somebody else's cream, assuming the reader has the preceding page in front of her. Its appearance here falls in the period when gelatine was shifting from a laborious kitchen product, boiled down from calves' feet or bought as brittle sheets, to a packaged convenience; granulated gelatine sold in envelopes went on to make moulded creams a staple American company dessert.