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Irish Moss Gruel
Soak a small handful of Irish moss for five minutes in a quantity of cold water. Rinse thoroughly, put into a pint of milk or water, or equal quantities of milk and water, and let stand where it will be very hot, but will not boil, for twenty minutes, then strain, season to taste with salt or sugar, as desired, and serve. All tea moss gruels are made in the same way.
A two-ingredient invalid dish that depends almost entirely on temperature control. Get the heat right and you have a lightly thickened, faintly marine-sweet gruel; boil it hard and it turns to glue.
- What Irish moss isCarrageen, the dried red seaweed Chondrus crispus, sold today in health food shops and Irish and Caribbean groceries as whole dried fronds. It is not the powdered carrageenan used as a commercial stabiliser, and it is not the "sea moss gel" sold in jars, which is already hydrated.
- A small handfulRoughly a quarter to a third of an ounce, about 7-10 g, of dried moss to a pint of liquid. Dried carrageen is feather-light and expands several times over when wet, so weigh it the first time rather than trusting the hand.
- Rinse harder than the recipe suggestsWild-harvested moss carries sand, shell fragments and the occasional small snail. Five minutes in cold water then a thorough rinse under running water, lifting the moss out of the grit rather than pouring it off, is the minimum.
- "Very hot but will not boil"This is the hinge. Hold the pan below a simmer, around 180-190F, with the surface barely trembling, which is what the instruction implies. Hard boiling is generally said to spoil the flavour and to give a thicker, more slippery extraction than gentle heat.
- StrainingPour through a fine sieve while hot and press the moss lightly with the back of a spoon. Don't let it stand in the pan; the liquid thickens and begins to set as it cools.
- It will set if it sitsWhat is a thin gruel hot becomes a soft jelly cold. Chilled and sweetened with sugar, vanilla or a little lemon, the same pint is the traditional carrageen blancmange, so leftovers are not wasted.
- Seasoning and yieldThe recipe gives no yield; a pint is one or two servings. It offers salt or sugar as desired, so milk versions can be sweetened and water versions salted and taken like a thin broth. Season after straining, as the recipe directs.
- "All tea moss gruels"Possibly a compositor's slip for "all these moss gruels"; in any case the same method was applied to Iceland moss and the other dried lichens and seaweeds sold by druggists for invalid cookery.
Carrageen takes its name from the Irish carraigín, "little rock," for the stony shoreline it clings to; by a tradition often repeated, though not established, the anglicised spelling comes from the coast of County Waterford, where the moss was gathered, sun-bleached and dried for market. Through the nineteenth century it was as much a druggist's item as a grocer's, prescribed for coughs, consumption and weak stomachs, and it reached American kitchens both with Irish emigrants and through the pharmacy trade. Gruels of oatmeal, arrowroot, barley and moss were the standard graduated diet between broth and solid food for invalids and convalescents. Before packaged gelatin became cheap and reliable, carrageen was also one of the household setting agents for milk puddings, alongside isinglass and calf's-foot, which is why the same pint of liquid does duty as both a hot drink and a cold blancmange.