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1 teaspoonful vanilla extract Lemon jelly 1/2 lb. (I cup) sugar 3 tablespoonfuls red currant jam Put the gelatine, water, jam and sugar into a saucepan, stir over the fire until dissolved, then strain, add the vanilla extract, two cupfuls of the cream and a few drops of red color. Allow to cool, pour into some small wet fish molds, and place on ice for three hours.
Line a wet mold with lemon jelly; when it is set, put in a little more jelly and set on ice.
The text as printed is a fragment: the ingredient list has been cut short, so the gelatine, water and cream quantities never appear, and the second paragraph about lining a mould with lemon jelly belongs to a further stage that the page does not finish. Treat it as a template for a moulded cream rather than a set of instructions to follow line by line.
- What is missingNo amount is given for gelatine, water, or the cream (the method calls for "two cupfuls of the cream" as though a larger quantity had been listed earlier). The lemon jelly is listed without quantity as well. Any conversion offered here would be invention.
- Working proportions for a moulded creamA Bavarian-style cream generally sets with about 1 tablespoon (1 envelope, 7 g) powdered gelatine per pint of liquid. Period gelatine was less consistently refined than the modern product, so an old recipe calling for a noticeably larger quantity is not necessarily an error.
- Half a pound of sugarThe recipe's own gloss, "1 cup," is the useful figure. That is a great deal of sugar against two cups of cream, and the currant jam adds more; modern palates usually want it reduced by a third.
- "Stir over the fire until dissolved"This means gentle heat only, until the granules vanish and the liquid runs clear off the spoon. Sustained boiling weakens gelatine's setting power, and the cream should in any case go in off the heat, as the recipe directs.
- Straining is not optionalThe currant jam carries skins and seeds, and undissolved gelatine forms threads. Pass the hot mixture through a fine sieve before the cream goes in, or the finished moulds will be gritty.
- "A few drops of red color"Nineteenth-century cochineal, now sold as carmine, or any modern red food colouring. Add it at the end, off the heat, and go slowly: the currant jam already tints the cream pink.
- "Place on ice for three hours"Three to four hours in the refrigerator for small moulds. To turn them out, dip the mould to its rim in warm water for a count of five, not longer, then invert onto a chilled plate.
- Lemon jelly liningThe lining technique means pouring a thin layer of set-strength lemon jelly into a chilled wet mould, rolling it to coat the sides, and letting it firm before the cream goes in. It wants a cold mould and patience; each layer must be fully set before the next is added.
- YieldImpossible to state exactly, since the water and jelly quantities are missing. On the two cups of cream alone, expect something in the region of six small moulds.
This belongs to the long Victorian and Edwardian vogue for moulded creams and shaped jellies, the branch of confectionery that produced the elaborate tinned copper and pewter moulds now sold as kitchen antiques. Currant jelly and jam were the standard household reddening and flavouring for such creams, doing the work of both fruit and colour before commercial purees were easy to buy, and gelatine had by this period shifted from the laborious home-boiled calf's foot stock to packeted sheets and powders, which is precisely what made these fussy layered moulds practical for an ordinary cook rather than a professional confectioner.