Wednesday, December 22, 2021

To Mold or Not To Mold: A History of Food Molds from the Victorian Era to Today

The kitchen pantry at the Gibson House stores an extensive collection of food molds. While the preponderance of these molds are metal, their form and decoration change depending on their purpose. Ranging from simple lady finger pans to ornamental scaled fish, they provide insight into how function and entertainment converged upon Victorian food culture.

One notable feature of these objects is their versatility. Molds made of copper, pewter, or tin could be used for the baking, steaming, and setting of jellies, cakes, custards, and puddings. One type of mold in the Gibson kitchen is an ice cream mold, a technology pioneered by Agnes Marshall. Her 1885 seminal work, The Book of Ices: Including Cream and Water Ices, Sorbets, Mousses, Iced Souffles, and Various Iced Dishes, showed readers how to use her inventions, including molds and ice cream freezers, alongside recipes. Molded foods were conveniently labor saving for kitchen staff and women homemakers. They could be prepared around a day before the meal, then the mold could be removed just before serving.
Furthermore, molds integrated foods exclusive to upper classes, such as ice cream, among the masses. Commercial ice cream production began in 1851, but manufacturers faced difficulties. Ice creams often separated during production, and bonders such as gum arabic, agar, sugar, or gelatin resulted in undesirable flavors, textures, or freezing temperatures. Thus, pioneers such as Agnes Marshall and Fannie Farmer were fundamental to distributing affordable recipes and technologies to women in middle and working classes. In 1896, Farmer published the most-purchased cookbook in American history, The Boston Cooking School Cookbook. She demystified food preparation through a scientific approach and popularized standardized measurements into American home cooking. Farmer writes, “The prejudice of thinking a frozen dessert difficult to prepare has long since been overcome.” Her recipes for ices provide detailed instructions on preparing molds, as well as advice for increasing accessibility among average people, such as substituting snow for ice.

Where these women helped to integrate molding into everyday practice, chef Charles Ranhofer maintained the elite status of molded foods. In his book surveying cuisine between 1862 to 1894, The Epicurean: A Complete Treatise of Analytical and Practical Studies on the Culinary Art, he focuses on cold service, or molded meats. Ranhofer writes, “The cold service is the most elegant and artistic one of the culinary art. It requires taste, skill, and much study in order to learn the necessary moldings, modelings, and requisite cookery…. Any ordinary cook can attain renown by studying the complicated ways of preparing cold dishes ... for by it he elevates his trade to a positive art.” Below is one example of this culinary craftsmanship, where bone broth, pistachios, truffles, eggs, and ham become a piece of sculpture.

That the molds at the Gibson kitchen more closely resemble the approach of Agnes Marshall rather than Ranhofer indicates that the Gibsons and their kitchen staff had a preference for the practical over the extravagant. However, this style of jellies, custards, and ices were nonetheless trendy and popular. In addition to creating shareable dishes, smaller forms such as these fish were used for garnishes and individual servings.

It wasn’t until the invention and distribution of instant gelatin in 1897 that molded jellies became accessible to people of all classes. Previously, only the rich could afford to serve jellied foods due to the fact that kitchens prepared their own gelatin from animal bones, which was labor and time intensive. However, gelatin dishes continued to maintain their class connotations. Recipe books such as this one, found in Charles Gibson junior’s personal papers, made recipes from exclusive hotels such as the Waldorf Astoria accessible to their clientele through brand partnerships.
 
During the economic crisis and food shortages of the Great Depression, Jell-O cemented itself as a staple of the American diet because gelatin was readily available and affordable. By the 1950s, jello salads became a veritable symbol of American domesticity and homemaking. The combined utility of instant-convenience foods, such as canned or powdered ingredients, with extravagant fruit and vegetable garnishes meant that the meal maintained its association with social aspiration.

Molded foods fell out of fashion by the 1980s, as fad diets promoted the restriction of sugar intake and changing tastes and technologies displaced the reputation of molded foods as convenient, affordable, and visually pleasing. In a 1983 Washington Post article, Linda Greider writes, “Most of the molds on the market today are watered-down versions of classic earlier designs…. Cheap, light molds batter and bend easily, after which their usefulness as molds is ended.” Once molded foods lost their association with higher-class aspiration and entertainment, so did their utility. Ultimately, the transformation of extravagant, yet surprisingly labor-saving and cost-effective, molded ices and gelatin in the Victorian era into culturally iconic Jell-O salads in the 1950s demonstrates the reliance of our eating habits on not only ingredients, but also practicality and technology.
- Miranda Leclerc (Fall 2021 Curatorial Intern, Simmons University)  


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