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Huff
4 tablespoonfuls powdered gelatine 6 ozs. (3/4 cup) sugar 1½ gills (3/4 cup) water Custard or whipped cream Stew the rhubarb and sugar together until quite soft and rub through a sieve; add the strained lemon juice and return to the fire. When
A whipped rhubarb gelatine — the fruit purée is set with gelatine, then beaten to a foam and served with custard or cream. A few of the quantities need translating before you start.
- GillsThe printed page gives 1½ gills, which is what the text now reads, matching the 3/4 cup in brackets. On this book's rough reckoning a gill stands in for about half a cup, though a quarter of an imperial pint is strictly 5 fl oz.
- How much gelatineFour tablespoons of powdered gelatine is nearer five standard 1/4-oz envelopes, something like 1 1/4 oz. That is a firm, almost rubbery set for a fruit puree on its own, which suggests the mixture was meant to be beaten to a foam and to hold air, though the text as printed breaks off before saying so. If your puree is on the thin side you will still want the full amount.
- Softening the gelatineSoak the powder in the cold water until it swells and goes opaque, then dissolve it in the hot fruit. Tipping dry powder into hot purée gives you lumps that no amount of beating will clear.
- Rhubarb quantityThe fruit weight is not stated. For 6 oz sugar and this much gelatine, reckon on about 2 lb trimmed rhubarb, which cooks down to roughly a pint and a half of purée.
- Rhubarb leavesUse the stalks only. The leaf blades contain enough oxalic acid to be genuinely poisonous and should go in the bin, not the pot.
- StewingRhubarb needs no added water — the sugar draws out plenty. Cook it covered over low heat until it collapses, five to ten minutes, then sieve. Long cooking dulls the pink colour, as do reactive metals such as iron or aluminium; stainless steel is fine.
- The whiskingThe name implies the beating is the point, though the text breaks off before it. Chill the gelatine-fruit mixture until it is the thickness of raw egg white, then whisk hard until it doubles and turns pale. Beat too early and it will not hold; too late and it seizes into a solid block.
- Setting and servingTurn into a wetted mould or individual glasses and chill at least four hours. No yield is given; serve with pouring custard or lightly whipped cream as the recipe directs.
"Huff" belongs to the family of English whipped puddings — snows, fluffs, whips and sponges — that flourished once commercial powdered gelatine became cheap and reliable in the later nineteenth century. Before that, cooks whipped cream or egg white to get air into a sweet; gelatine let a fruit purée itself be beaten into a foam that would hold overnight, and the same fruit could be turned into a jelly, a cream or a huff depending on how much air went in. Rhubarb was the obvious candidate in spring: sharp enough to survive the sugar, cheap, and grown in gardens and forcing sheds across the country. The plain custard or cream served alongside is not decoration but ballast, softening the acidity of the fruit.