She Blinded Me With Jell-O

Here’s the perfect buffet-table dish for physics conferences.

This is from Mary Margaret McBride’s Encyclopedia of Cooking (1960). Volume 1 to be precise, which includes ABC’s For Cooks, Appetizers and Party Snacks, and Bean Bakes. I am not sure what category the Self-Layering Salad comes under, but I am pretty sure that it is not a Bean Bake.

Self-Layering Salad

2 packages orange-flavored gelatin
2 cups hot water
2 cups cold water
1/4 tsp almond extract
2 cups drained sliced Cling peaches, drained (No. 2 1/2 can)
3 medium bananas, sliced

Empty gelatin dessert into 2-quart bowl. Add hot water and stir until gelatin dessert has dissolved. Add cold water and almond extract to gelatin mixture. Cool and pour into a lightly oiled 9 1/2 x 5 1/4 x 2 3/4 inch loaf pan. Add peaches and banana slices to gelatin mixture. Be sure bananas are coated with gelatin mixture. Stir to distribute fruit evenly. Chill in refrigerator until firm.

Peaches will sink to the bottom of loaf pan and bananas will float, making a self-layered salad. Serves 6 to 8.

I guess those peaches did sink – canned peaches are like wet sponges. All that syrup. They even call it heavy syrup. That stuff has a very low center of gravity.

I think this probably is a party snack after all – a party for research scientists. Serve the self-layering salad and have them figure out the physics of the fruit to gelatin ratios. Or devise a few experiments for determining which fruits rise to the top of Jell-O and if so, in what sort of formations. Oh, or whatever. What do you want, I was an English major. They’ll figure something out, believe me. They will just entertain themselves over by the buffet table over there, and then we can sneak off and relax out by the pool with a nice big vodka and tonic. (Well, if we had a pool. But you know what I mean!)

Image is from a 1961 women’s magazine ad, about promoting higher education. It claims that the guy is a high school student in a physics lab. I don’t like the look of the glowing smoking stuff on the right though. And I don’t see a classroom in the background. However, the ad says “who is to say that he won’t someday be a brilliant scientist.”  Me, I will say he won’t. For one thing, a brilliant scientist would wear protective goggles around that stuff on the right. And turn on the overhead lights too.

What I think he should do is get out of the lab and start making Jell-O salads instead.

Irish Moss Jelly

Irish recipes are on the menu today (I know, that is pretty lame, but it is Monday, that’s my excuse) – because it is St. Patrick’s Day today, that’s what. As well as Monday. Don’t have any special Monday recipes though.

Also, you probably ought to know that I am partly Scotch-Irish, though also part regular-Irish by marriage. That counts, doesn’t it? As a genealogist I consider all my ancestors-in-law sort of mine, too. Especially if I found them in the census! So my Irish-by-marriage ancestry is from Kerry (or Cork, I haven’t worked that out quite yet). And on my side, from Tyrone and Londonderry.

I have got two variations of one recipe in honor of the day. The first is from Mrs Beeton’s All About Cookery (ca 1925-30). Yes, I know she was English. But her ingredients are Celtic-sounding. And everyone should celebrate St. Patrick’s Day – even Mrs. Beeton.

Irish Moss Jelly

Ingredients: 1/2 an oz. of Irish moss or agar agar, 1 pint of water, 1/2 a glass of sherry (optional), 1 dessertspoonful of lemon-juice, sugar to taste.

Method: Wash the moss thoroughly, and soak it in cold water for about 12 hours. Strain, put it in a stew-pan with 1 pint of water, and simmer gently for about 5 hours, adding more water as evaporation occurs, so as to keep the quantity of liquid to 1 pint. Strain, sweeten to taste, add the lemon-juice and sherry (if used), and turn into a mould previously rinsed with cold water. Irish moss possesses medicinal properties, but the flavour is somewhat unpalatable, hence the necessity of disguising it with sherry or lemon-juice. Time: about 17 hours.

Irish moss (carraigin or fiadhain in Irish Gaelic) is a seaweed found on the rocky North Atlantic coasts in Europe and North America. It ranges in color from yellow-green to red to brown-purple, and is full of carrageen, which forms a jelly when heated to a boil. Irish or carrageen moss is also rich in protein, iodine and other minerals. Carrageenan, which is derived from this seaweed, is used as a stabilizer in products such as ice cream. In Asia it is used in jellied desserts, as it is similar to agar agar. It can have a sea-water taste, according to Wikipedia, so it is usually combined with other, more dessert-friendly flavors.

Another seaweed (genus Gracularia) is called Irish moss in the Carribean, where it is used in beverages and desserts, which often have vanilla or strawberry added to them.

But do the Irish eat Irish moss jelly? The name sort of suggests that they do, doesn’t it? Mary Caherty’s Real Irish Cookery(Robert Hale Ltd, London, 1995), is a tiny book and the only Irish cookbook in my collection. She has a recipe for “Carrageen Jelly” which is very similar to Mrs. Beeton’s. She suggests that you boil an ounce of “Carrageen moss” in a pint of milk, with 2 dessertspoonfuls of sugar and a bit of salt, after soaking the moss for 15 minutes in cold water. After simmering this for half an hour, one strains the mixture and puts it in a mold to set. She also recommends adding some stewed fruit just before you put it in the mold (Caherty, pp 55-56). And it probably wouldn’t take 17 hours to make, which beats Mrs. Beeton.

And if you used gooseberries, you would get a lovely green jelly, just right for St. Patrick’s Day!

The image is from one of the many delightful old ads at the beginning and end of the Mrs. Beeton book – there were a lot of ads for gelatins. No Knox or Cox gelatin though.

Cox’s Gelatine Recipes, 1930

I hadn’t known that there was any other kind of gelatin except Knox, but here’s its rhyming rival, Cox, “used by good housewives since 1845.” Knox gelatin came along in 1896, so it was the latecomer.

There is a special section for “Recipes for Use with Mechanical Refrigerators,” but if you still had an icebox, that was all right too, you just couldn’t make Frozen Apple Cream or Maple Fig Mousse.

I have got two recipes for you – a strange one, because those are fun, and a really good one – those are also fun, plus you might even want to make those kind.

I doubt that you will want to fill your sandwiches with the following, however:

Mint Filling For Sandwiches1 tablespoon Cox’s Gelatine
4 tablespoons cold water
25 fresh mint leaves
4 tablesppons boiling water
1/8 teaspoon salt
Few drops green color
1 cup thick cream, whipped
2 tablespoons sugar
Unbuttered bread or crackersMix Gelatine with cold water. Cut mint leaves into small pieces, put them into a cup and add boiling water. Cover and soak thirty minutes, strain, pressing hard. Dissolve Gelatine over fire, add sugar, mint, water, salt, color, and cool. Fold in cream and turn into a shallow wet mold. When firm, turn out carefully, cut in thin slices and put between bread or crackers.

Not that it would be awful, just a little bit odd. But I would hold out for the Grape Fruit Lozenges, personally. I love the word ‘lozenge’ – despite its cough-droppy association. According to Wikipedia the word lozenge has been used in a medical context, i.e. the throat lozenge, since about 1530. The word comes from the French word for rhombus, “losange.”

Grape Fruit Lozenges

1 tablespoon Cox’s Gelatine
1 1/2 cups confectioner’s sugar
8 tablespoons cold water
1/2 tablespoon corn or golden syrup
4 tablespoons grape fruit juice
Yellow color Put one-half cup of the confectioner’s sugar and four tablespoonfuls of cold water into a saucepan; when dissolved, add corn syup, bring to the boiling point, add Gelatine mixed with remainder of water, grape fruit juice and a few drops of yellow color. Sift remainder of sugar into a bowl, pour hot mixture into center, and allow it to cool. Work it with a wooden spoon until smooth. Spread mixture into a layer one inch thick in a wet pan, allow it to harden, cut into squares and roll in sugar.

Wouldn’t this be lovely with pink grapefruit juice (and maybe a bit more fruit juice and less water), and tinted pink?

“Gel-Cookery Helps Us Eat Better”

Oh, Knox Sparkling Unflavored Gelatine, how we love you. “More and more thousands of women” – just like the over-caffeinated and disembodied woman in this ad – are savings loads of money on food by sticking Knox gelatine into everything. Just make it into a mold – anything you’ve got. It’ll go farther that way – leftover casseroles, cake, fruit, peas and carrots, tuna, anything. “Prove to yourself that homemade is always best, just as easy, and far more thrifty.” That would depend on what you’re gelling, though. I like the sound of the Coffee Sponge, though. We used to have coffee jello when I was growing up, and it was really good.

Coffee Sponge

1. Soften 1 envelope Knox Unflavored Gelatine in 1/2 cup cold coffee. 2. Dissolve gelatine and 1/4 cup sugar thoroughly in 1 cup very hot coffee.

3. Stir in 1 tablespoon lemon juice and, if desired, 1/4 teaspoon vanilla.

4. Chill or freeze until unbeaten egg white consistency.

5. Gradually beat 1/4 cup sugar into 2 stiffly beaten egg whites.

6. Whip gelatine until fluffy, very thick., fine-textured, and volume has doubled.7. Fold into egg white mixture.8. Turn into 2 1-lb. coffee cans waxed paper lined (or use half for a pie filling) and chill until firm.9. Unmold and decorate as desired.

10. Makes 8 to 10 servings.
I would substitute whipped cream for the raw egg whites and more vanilla for the lemon juice. I don’t know what the lemon juice is supposed to do for you, you don’t generally take your coffee with it. Maybe you could put a bit of brandy in instead of the lemon juice – Irish Coffee Sponge. I’ll bet you anything that the lady in the picture has been digging into some of that!