Orange Whips
Beat the whites of three eggs to a froth; dissolve onethird of a box of gelatine, half pound of sugar and the juice of eight oranges together, and allow the mixture to jelly slightly; then add the eggs, which should be stiff enough to stand alone. Mix all thoroughly together, put in moulds and set on ice.
This is a chilled gelatine foam in which the egg whites are never heated at any point. That single fact is what rules it out, and it is worth being precise about why.
- The whites are eaten rawThree whipped whites are folded into a cool, slightly set orange jelly and then chilled in moulds. Nothing in the process reaches a temperature that would inactivate Salmonella, and the mixture then sits for hours at a temperature that favours bacterial growth. Modern recipes for whips and snows either use pasteurised whites or cook the meringue with hot syrup.
- The acid does not make it safeJuice from eight oranges sounds like a lot of acid, but citrus juice diluted with sugar and gelatine is nowhere near acidic enough to be relied on as a control. Tartness is not a preservative here.
- "Set on ice" is not refrigerationAn ice-chest of this period generally held food well above the 40F a modern refrigerator maintains, and temperatures varied with the ice supply. The original instruction assumes a standard of cold that was never as cold as it sounds, which compounds the raw-egg problem rather than offsetting it.
- Long unattended chillingA whip of this size needs several hours in the moulds to set firm, and it is served without any further heating. That is a long hold time for an uncooked egg-protein foam.
- On the measurements, for reference onlyA box of gelatine in this period was commonly around an ounce of sheet or granulated gelatine, so a third of a box works out at roughly three teaspoons of modern powdered gelatine; half a pound of sugar is about a cup and an eighth. These are given to make sense of the text, not to reconstruct it.
- If you want the dishUse a current recipe for orange snow or orange chiffon built on pasteurised egg whites or a cooked Italian meringue.
"Whip" is the older English name for any dessert lightened with beaten whites or cream and set with isinglass or gelatine - a cousin of the snow puddings, sponges and creams that fill the sweet chapters of Victorian and Edwardian cookbooks. Its popularity around 1900 owed much to cheap packaged gelatine in boxes, which spared cooks the tedious business of boiling down calves' feet for stock jelly and put moulded desserts within reach of any household with a supply of ice. Oranges did similar duty: by the turn of the century Florida and California fruit moved by rail in quantity, and a flavour that had been a winter luxury became more ordinary.