Lemons – Turnspit and Table

First of all, apologies that it’s been a while, between exams, moving and Christmas its been a bit crazy but better late than never. The challenge this time was “Fear Factor”, no not the TV show but a dish, technique or ingredient that strikes fear into your very heart. For me the obvious answer was calves foot jelly, a moulded jelly made by boiling calves feet for hours to extract the gelatine. Between the ick factor, the sheer amount of effort involved and the scariness of unmoulding a jelly, I’m sure you can understand why this dish has me shaking in my boots.

Unfortunately (or fortunately?) I seriously underestimated how difficult it would be to find calves feet. Thinking about the recipe again though, I realised that the part that really strikes fear into my heart is setting and unmoulding the jelly, and that can certainly be done without extracting my own gelatine. If however you are really keen to learn about calves feet jelly, the amazing blog The Cook and the Curator has a great video about making it from scratch.

The recipe I decided to use comes from Mrs. Beeton’s The Book of Household Management and is for a Lemon Blancmange. Blancmange is a dish with a very long history, but has become almost unrecognisable over time. It’s a staple of medieval and Victorian cookbooks, whether as a white soup made of shredded chicken and almond milk, or an elaborate jelly set with isinglass.

The Recipe

LEMON BLANCMANGE. 1442.

INGREDIENTS.— 1 quart of milk, the yolks of 4 eggs, 3 oz. of ground rice, 6 oz. of pounded sugar, 1-1/2 oz. of fresh butter, the rind of 1 lemon, the juice of 2, 1/2 oz. of gelatine.

Mode.— Make a custard with the yolks of the eggs and 1/2 pint of the milk, and, when done, put it into a basin: put half the remainder of the milk into a saucepan with the ground rice, fresh butter, lemon-rind, and 3 oz. of the sugar, and let these ingredients boil until the mixture is stiff, stirring them continually; when done, pour it into the bowl where the custard is, mixing both well together. Put the gelatine with the rest of the milk into a saucepan, and let it stand by the side of the fire to dissolve; boil for a minute or two, stir carefully into the basin, adding 3 oz. more of pounded sugar. When cold, stir in the lemon-juice, which should be carefully strained, and pour the mixture into a well-oiled mould, leaving out the lemon-peel, and set the mould in a pan of cold water until wanted for table. Use eggs that have rich-looking yolks; and, should the weather be very warm, rather a larger proportion of gelatine must be allowed.

Time.— Altogether, 1 hour. Average cost, 1s. 6d. Sufficient to fill 2 small moulds. Seasonable at any time.[1]

The Redaction

Mrs Beeton’s Lemon Blancmange

4 cups of milk

4 egg yolks

85g ground rice

170g sugar

43g butter

The rind of 1 lemon, peeled

Juice of 2 lemons

14g powdered gelatine
Note: Every time you go to place milk in the saucepan wet it with water first.

Place 1 cup of milk in a saucepan and bring it to a slow simmer. In a large bowl whisk the 4 egg yolks together. Slowly whisk the hot milk into the egg yolks until it is all incorporated. Place the mixture back into the saucepan and cook on a low heat, stirring constantly until it thickens into a custard*.
Place another 1 1/2 cups of milk into the saucepan with the ground rice, half the sugar, the butter and pieces of lemon rind. Boil for 5-10 minutes or until it is stiff and holds its shape. Stir this mixture into the custard.
Place the remaining 1 1/2 cups of milk into the saucepan. Sprinkle the gelatine over the milk and allow it to dissolve. Turn on a low heat and stir until dissolved before bringing it to the boil for 1 minute. Add this and the remaining sugar to the custard.
Allow the mixture to cool before adding the lemon juice and removing the lemon peel. Pour the mixture into moulds greased with a flavourless oil and leave in the fridge to set. To remove place the mould in very hot water for 30 seconds, but don’t let the blancmange get wet, and just loosen the edge to break the vacuum. Carefully turn the blancmange out onto a plate. If it does not come out of the mould return it to the hot water for another 30 seconds before trying again.

*If the mixture is lumpy with bits of egg just sieve them out.

The Recipe: Lemon Blancmange from The Book of Household Management (available here)

The Date: 1861

How did you make it? See above.

Time to complete?: 45 mins to make it, several hours to set.

How successful was it?: It was delicious! Creamy, firm and not too sweet, it even turned out of the mould well, after a couple of anxious moments. I served it with a simple raspberry coulis of frozen raspberries, water and sugar cooked and mashed together.

How accurate?: I’m not sure what type of gelatine the original recipe would have used (powdered, leaf, liquid?) or how finely ground the rice should be but it seemed to work. I also set it in the fridge rather than in a bowl of cold water because the weather was too warm for that.

[1] Isabella Beeton, ed., Beeton’s Book of Household Management (London: S.O Beeton, 1861), rec. 1442.

Bibliography

Beeton, Isabella, ed. Beeton’s Book of Household Management. London: S.O Beeton, 1861.

This is just a quick extra post, following up on my promise for the In a Jam challenge to provide the recipe for Lemon Jelly which I made. I had a surplus of lemons and as I was researching marmalade recipes for the challenge a couple of weeks ago I came across several rather intriguing recipes for Lemon Jelly.

It’s a jelly in the American sense of the word, as in a spreadable preserve rather than a semi-solid, wobbly dessert. In preserving terms, the use of jelly instead of jam means that it is made from the juice of the fruit, rather than the pulp which makes jellies much smoother but less efficient than jams. Typically in a jelly the fruit is cooked to release the juices, then strained through muslin for several hours to separate the juice from the pulp. The juice is then re-cooked with sugar until it reaches the setting point before being poured into hot jars.

These recipes are quite unusual, however, because two of them contain egg-whites.^{^[1]} Beacause of the difficulty in interpreting the recipe which I used, and because I would like to try the other recipes first, I have not given a redaction, but if you would like to try making the jelly it should be easy enough to follow my steps with the quantities given.

The House-Keeper’s Pocket-Book and Compleat Family Cook (4th ed. 1748 available as a PDF here) by Mrs. Sarah Harrison of Devonshire offers three recipes for Lemon Jelly (like the marmalade it is served in glasses as part of the dessert course).

The first recipe:

“TAKE five large Lemons and squeeze out the Juice, and beat the Whites of six Eggs very well; put to it twenty Spoonfuls of Spring Water, and ten Ounces of double-refin’d Sugar beat and sifted; mix all together, and strain it through a Jelly Bag, and set it over a gentle Fire, with a bit of Lemon-peel in it; stir it all the while, and skim it very clean; when it is as hot as you can bear your Finger in it, take it off, and take out the Peel, and pour your Jelly into Glasses.”[2]

The second recipe:

“TAKE three large Lemons, or four small ones, cut them in half, and take out all the Meat, and put it into a silver Pot; put as much Water as the Skin of your Lemons will hold into them, and let them stand three quarters of an Hour; then take the Whites of four Eggs, beat them very well, and let them stand till the Froth is fallen, strain your Lemons upon a Pound of double-refin’d refin’d[sic] Sugar broke into Lumps, let it stand till it is quite melted, then put in your Eggs well skimm’d being first strain’d through a thin Cotton Cloth; stir it till it will jelly, and take out your Peel before you put it in the Dish. You must see that your Lemons be free from Spots, or else your Jelly will not be white.”[3]

The third recipe:

“TAKE the best Lemons without Seeds, peel off the Rinds, and put the Meat in Quarters, having a Care of breaking the Skins; then take their Weight in double-refin’d Sugar, put your Sugar into a silver Bason [sic], and put it upon the Fire with as much Water as will wet it, and stir it till it comes to a clear Syrup; in the mean Time you must have your Lemon Quarters in another silver Dish upon the Fire, with as much Water as will keep them wet, and let them boil till they are tender; then put them into the Bason [sic] of Syrup, and set them on a soft Fire to heat, but not boil; as soon as ever they begin to simmer the least that can be, take them off, and shake them, and let them not be on the Fire again till they are pretty cold (for if they boyl they are spoil’d); and so continue setting them on and off till the Syrup will jelly; and then either put up the Jelly by itself in Glasses, and put the Quarters on a glass Sheet to dry, or on a Slieve [sic] in the Sun, or glass the Quarters and the Jelly all together, for they will do well both Ways.”[4]

My Process

I used the second recipe which calls for three large or four small, spotless lemons. I cut them in half and spooned out all the pulp that I could. I placed the pulp into a saucepan, filled each half lemon with water and poured the water into the saucepan. I then left this to stand for 45 mins.

Whilst waiting for the pulp to be ready, I beat the whites of four eggs. This for me was the main problem with the recipe, it sounds like you beat the eggs to peaks and then allow them to drop, but does that even work? Or do you just beat it until slightly foamy? I beat it until I had foamy, very soft peaks on top, but after standing for a while there was also liquid underneath. On reflection I think it would be better to whisk it until it was a bubbly liquid, but maybe it is possible to allow it to drop by leaving more time.

Having beaten my eggs I strained the lemon pulp through muslin onto 450g of sugar with a piece of lemon peel (this is mentioned later in the recipe to be removed so I think it’s just missing the instruction to add it in). After gently stirring the mixture over a low heat until the sugar was dissolved I then added the egg whites by straining them through muslin into the saucepan. This is where it quickly became apparent that they were too well whipped. The liquid was easily incorporated into the jelly, as was some of the froth but most was not and had to be skimmed off the top of the jelly. I then cooked it until it reached setting point, removed the piece of lemon peel and poured it into dessert glasses.

Given what seemed to be an awful mistake, the jelly turned out remarkably well. It was one of the most delicious preserves I’ve ever eaten with a flavour similar to lemon-sorbet and the most delightful, effervescent texture. It felt light and bubbly on the tongue, an effect which I think must be because of the egg whites. It really was like Spring for the palate!

Harrison, Sarah. The House-Keeper’s Pocket-Book; And Compleat Family Cook. 4th ed. London: Printed for R. Ware, at the Bible and Sun on Ludgate-Hill, 1748.

^{^[1]} Warning: If you are in an ‘at risk’ group (babies, toddlers, pregnant women, elderly people or the immune-compromised) for raw egg please don’t try the recipes containing raw egg.

[2] Sarah Harrison, The House-Keeper’s Pocket-Book; And Compleat Family Cook, 4th ed. (London: Printed for R. Ware, at the Bible and Sun on Ludgate-Hill, 1748), 148.

[3] Ibid., 148–149.

[4] Ibid., 149.

Tag: Lemons (page 1 of 1)

A Lemon Blancmange

The Recipe

The Redaction

Mrs Beeton’s Lemon Blancmange

Bibliography

In a Jelly