Miscellaneana: Savoring antique jelly molds
Three molds engraved with the mark for Jones Bros of Down Street, London, one of the best-known retailers in the capital who supplied the Duke of Wellington. They were estimated at £150-£200. The Canterbury Auction Galleries photo
LONDON – Whisper it, but I’m not a fan of Downton Abbey, that is apart from savoring the period room settings and the chance to see how the landed gentry enjoyed their privileged surroundings.
Most episodes spend a good deal in the kitchens of the great house and we are treated to a glimpse of how the magnificent meals were created using what today look like the most primitive of cooking aids. Now there’s a collecting topic for you.
The eagle-eyed will have spotted the “batterie de cuisine,” the serried rows of gleaming copper saucepans, kettles, pots and pans, all arranged by size on shelves around the walls.
Too much polishing for me, but I would like to find an antique copper jelly mold, if only to quieten the Business Manager (Mrs P.) who’s been telling me she’d like one for as long as I’ve known her.
London metal manufacturers Benham & Froud were renowned for their jelly molds. Look for the orb and cross trademark. This pair was estimated at £200-£300 in a recent sale. The Canterbury Auction Galleries photo
I can’t remember the last time we had jelly, but things would be different if we’d lived Downton-style.
Regency, Victorian and Edwardian dinner tables positively groaned under the weight of the most spectacular jellies, created by elaborate molds that are now highly sought after by lovers of kitchenalia.
Jelly molds have been around for centuries. At a royal banquet at Greenwich in 1509, 1,000 guests were served “jellies of some 20 sorts [which] surpassed everything, being made in the shape of castles, and animals of various descriptions, as beautiful and as admirable as can be imagined.”
The earthenware molds that produced them are now lost but those made from copper, which did not appear until the first quarter of the 19th century, are still readily available, if your pockets are deep enough.
These molds are engraved with the initials of their owners and numbers indicating their use in certain recipes. They were estimated at £150-£200. The Canterbury Auction Galleries photo
The key to the adoption of copper for cooking utensils was manufacturers mastering the technique of tinning.
Copper, you seen, is prone to attack by verdigris, a greenish deposit that is poisonous. It forms when acetic acid, produced by food as it ferments, comes into contact with the copper to produce copper acetate.
To guard against verdigris poisoning, the insides of all copper cooking pots, including jelly molds, must be coated with a layer of tin.
Birmingham and other Midlands towns were at the center of production and by the middle of the century, annual output exceeded 20,000 tons.
A group of five Victorian jelly molds estimated at £200-£300. The Canterbury Auction Galleries photo
Early molds were hammered into shape by hand and then tinned individually.
Mostly circular, oval or rectangular in shape, they are decorated on top with embossed birds, animals, crowns, fruits and flowers, and their sides are fluted or gadrooned.
Later, when the industrial revolution brought mechanisation, manufacturers quickly adapted the die-stamping techniques of their colleagues in the silver trade to the mass-production of jelly molds in elaborate, architectural, shapes.
After die-stamping and trimming, they were pickled in acid to remove stains and then immersed in a vat of molten tin, the exterior having first been painted with a solution of whiting and size.
Consequently, only the interior surface that would come into contact with the jelly was tinned, while the exterior of the mold was finally polished on a lathe.
Later molds are heavier as well as being more elaborate and different shapes were for specific dishes.
A group of five Victorian jelly molds estimated at £150-£200. The Canterbury Auction Galleries photo
One, for example, was used for a recipe known as Constantia Jelly, after the sweet Constantia wine from South Africa it contained. Others were for “blanc-manger” and “jaune-manger.”
Names of molds – they were also used for savory and vegetable entrees – included: Crawfish, King Fisher, Hare, Fancy Cutlet, Ham, Bird’s Nest, Ox Tongue and Chicken.
Others had raised bosses on which glacé or fresh fruit dipped in liqueur could be placed, while those with overlapping borders of medallions were intended for slices of cucumber or apple.
Harrod’s catalog for 1895 illustrated 39 different shapes of molds, each of which came in a number of sizes.
My own Army and Navy Co-operative Society price list for 1926-27 includes dual-purpose examples for both jelly and cakes with a central pipe to allow heat to travel to the center.
Prices range from the small bucket-shaped dariole mold for individual puddings at 12 shillings to 16 shillings and ninepence a dozen, depending on size, to a prohibitive 21 shillings for a 11/4 (one and a quarter) -pint job that looks like a cluster of four pinnacles from a fairy-tale castle.
Large plain molds with a hole through the center and rounded tops were used for molding savory timbales of rice, macaroni or noodles (named after the Arab thabal, meaning drum).
Copper bomb-shape molds with lids and brass air-release screw were intended for steamed puddings, while boiled puddings could be made in shapes such as hedgehogs, half pineapples and melons.
Some copper molds also bear the impressed marks of their retailers. Among the 500 supplied to the Duke of Wellington for use in the kitchens at his London home, Apsley House, are those marked variously Jones Bros; Temple & Crook; Benham & Sons; James Williams & Sons, Adams & Son and Trottier, Paris.
This latter firm also supplied many fine jelly molds to Queen Victoria, some of which are stamped “VR WC K” – standing for Victoria Regina, Windsor Castle, Kitchen.
Two large molds with angular, architectural decoration and a small entrée or sponge mold. They were estimated at £150-£200. The Canterbury Auction Galleries photo
So why are they personalized, surely not as a status symbol? The clue lies in the tinning and the grave consequences of verdigris poisoning. Continued use and cleaning inevitably led to an eventual thinning of the layer of tin on the inside of the mold.
To guard against any possible disaster, molds were returned to the manufacturer periodically for retinning.
When royalty, earls or members of the landed gentry returned their sets of jelly molds, probably the most expensive element in the batterie de cuisine of a great house, it was vital they were identifiable and sent back to the correct owners.
And here’s another throwaway snippet: The numbers stamped on copper jelly molds relate to their positions on the shelves in the kitchen, not size.
Recipes handed down by one cook to the next in a great house not only listed the ingredients and method of preparing and cooking a particular dish, they also indicated the exact mold in which it should be made.
Newcomers to collecting copper jelly molds should beware of nasty, thin reproductions. The escalating cost of raw materials and skilled workmanship meant the end of large-scale production by about 1930.
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By CHRISTOPHER PROUDLOVE
