Fruit Jellies
A pretty dessert, garnished with whipped cream is formed of cubes of fruit jellies in various colors. Make orange jelly, tinting it the most brilliant orange color by preparing it from the clear juice of the fruit. Soak a third of a package of gelatine in half a cupful of cold water, when it has soaked two hours, stir in half a cupful of boiling water and stir it until it is dissolved. Strain it into a pint of clear orange juice. Add to the orange jelly the grated yellow or outer rind of two oranges and half a cupful of sugar. Add also a tablespoonful of brandy. Strain the whole through a pointed flannel bag twice squeezing it through the first time to obtain the color and flavor of the rind in the jelly; cool this jelly in sheets an inch and a quarter thick. Make a sheet of lemon jelly in the same way, using the juice of lemons instead of oranges, with a cup of sugar and omitting the brandy. Color it a delicate lime green. Make another sheet of fruit jelly, of preserved strawberry juice. Cut these jellies into cubes with a sharp knife or into ornamental forms, and serve them piled on a platter in pyramidal shape, surrounded by whipped cream. Bits of orange pulp, little dice candied pineapple preserved, or quarters of candied cherries may be used in these jellies.
Three sheets of clear jelly, cut up and stacked, is a straightforward dessert, but the gelatine quantity given here is both archaic and too low for jelly that will hold a cut edge.
- The gelatine measureA "package" or "box" of granulated gelatine in this period is not a fixed quantity; figures from an ounce to two ounces appear in contemporary books, so a third of one is somewhere between about one and two tablespoons, i.e. one to two modern envelopes (an envelope is 2 1/4 tsp). Against the roughly 3 cups of liquid here (1/2 cup cold water, 1/2 cup boiling water and a pint of juice) the lower reading gives a soft spoonable set rather than a jelly you can cube; count on 2 to 2 1/2 envelopes per pint of juice if you want clean edges.
- Soaking timeTwo hours of soaking belongs to older, coarser gelatine. Modern granulated gelatine blooms fully in cold water in five to ten minutes, and the hot water then dissolves it in under a minute of stirring.
- Do not boil itDissolve the bloomed gelatine in boiling water off the heat and stir only until it is clear. Gelatine held at a boil loses setting strength, which matters more here because the recipe is already light on it.
- The flannel bagA "pointed flannel bag" is a conical jelly bag. Doubled fine cheesecloth or a fine nylon strainer does the same work. Squeezing the first pass is deliberate: it forces the oils from the grated zest into the jelly. The second pass, unsqueezed, is what makes it clear.
- Sheet thicknessAn inch and a quarter of jelly from about 3 cups of liquid means a small pan. A 6-inch square pan gives roughly that depth; a loaf pan is close to an inch, and an 8-inch square pan will give you only about two-thirds of an inch.
- ColourThe orange sheet takes its colour from the juice itself, as the recipe directs; only the "delicate lime green" of the lemon sheet calls for added colouring, and period vegetable colourings varied widely in strength. Use gel food colour a drop at a time, stirring into the warm jelly before it is poured.
- Preserved strawberry juiceThis means the syrup drained from strawberry preserves, already sweet. Taste before adding any sugar, and thin with water to a pint if you have less.
- PineappleCandied or preserved pineapple is safe to fold in; fresh pineapple is not. Its bromelain digests gelatine and the sheet will never set.
- YieldThree sheets cut into 3/4-inch cubes make a generous pyramid for eight to ten. Chill at least four hours, and cut with a thin knife dipped in hot water.
Moulded jellies were a display dish long before they were an easy one: through the mid-nineteenth century the gelatine came from boiling calves' feet or isinglass, and clarity was a mark of a serious kitchen. Commercially packaged granulated gelatine, sold by the box in the 1890s, put clear bright jelly within reach of any household cook, and books of this era answer with pages of orange, lemon, wine and coffee jellies. Cutting set jelly into cubes and piling them up with whipped cream was a way of showing off colour in an age when a table was judged by how it looked, and the double straining through a flannel bag is the last trace of the older standard of transparency. The tablespoon of brandy in the orange sheet is period-typical seasoning rather than a set-piece of drinking, and it is pointedly left out of the lemon.