Brave New Jelly
By C. K. ALLEN, K.C.
HE is a poor-spirited creature who does not retain an affection for the jelly which brightened his childhood. It was the colours that did it ; for, as Watt-Bosch has shown, nothing affects the character so much as vivid colours seen in childhood, and when these hues are not merely seen but ingested, then, to use Watt-Bosch's own graphic expression, they " dye the psyche for life." Those gleaming pink, crimson and amber glasses at birthday parties ' • those polychromatic straw- berries, raspberries, apricots and lemons—how irresistible they were, and how this dome of many-coloured chemicals stained the white radiance of childhood! Sometimes the fascinating sub- stance was on a dish, all in one translucent mass—but no ordinary mass, for it was sculpt in the most rococo patterns. And jelly had this added charm, that it was not under such severe sumptuary laws as other sweetmeats. It was " harmless," it was even " nourishing " (were not invalids fed upon it-?), it was far, far soother than those creamy curds which sometimes had un- fortunate consequences. The only possible parental objection to jelly was that, with those less refined little boys who are, alas! to be found even in the best-regulated parties, the word perhaps rhymed too easily. You can date a man by his knowledge of the evolution of jelly. If advanced in life, he can remember a time when the making of jelly was a major culinary operation, involving many sheets of gelatine and long, anxious straining through a ' jelly-bag "—still an article of faith, I am told, with a few die-hards. Then came the raw material in the form of a solid gelatinous brick or tablet. It looked intractable enough, but juvenile delinquents could carve off small, surreptitious chips and chew thetn, though my recol- lection is that the sense of sin was much sweeter than the taste. I believe these tablets still survive, but as it took a little time and effort to melt them in 'boiling water, Science, the Polymetis, advanced to the last refinement—the jelly-crystals in packets adorned with all the fruits of the earth in hectic tints. A little hot water, a few whisks with a spoon, a cool place, and the house- wife could get on with the ironing, or go to the pictures, without a care in the world.
And yet, in those bad old -days, the jelly-minded housewife was almost unbelievably primitive in her methods. She bought a packet of one of the many brands which were offered to her choice. -If the jelly did not jell, or if she thought the Pure Fruit Flavour more reminiscent of embrocation than of raspberries, she tried another brand, and went on doing so until she found the kind which satisfied her morbid craving. Strange as it may seem, the cut-throat competition of private enterprise seldom failed to provide her with the kind of jelly which she and the family fancied.
All that is changed by the Welfare State. There are those in Whitehall who know far better than the housewife what kind of jelly she needs and likes, or ought to need and like. A jelly is-not a jelly fit for human consumption unless it conforms to the legal " setting test," which is defined by the Food Standards (Table Jellies) Order, 1949, made under the Defence (Sale of Food) Regulations, 1943, which in its turn is backed by all the majesty of the Emergency Laws (Miscellaneous Provisions) Act, 1947. Very appropriately, you may think, do table-jellid come under Miscellaneous Provisions, and this is how you can tell whether they behave like jellies or not: " If the product is sold in a container with a content intended to produce one pint of a table-jelly sweet, that content or in any other case 3.75 oz. of the product shall be made into a table- jelly sweet: (a) in the case of table-jelly tablets or table-jelly crystals by the addition of water at 88° C. approximately, and (b) in the case of table-jelly compounds by the addition of milk at 88° C. approximately, the total volume to amount in each case to one pint.
" Eighty-five mis. of the solution shall be immediately intro- duced into each of six beakers of approximately 5 cm. internal diameter and the beakers cooled for eighteen hours in a water bath maintained at 16° C. ± 1° C. At the end of this period the contents of the beakers shall be turned out on to -(sic) a plate or dish by the following method: " Each beaker shall be immersed in a water-bath maintained at 16° C. ± 1° C. At the end of this period the contents of the beakers shall be turned out on to (sic) a plate or dish by the following method : Each beaker shall be immersed in a water- bath at approximately 50° C. for eight seconds. Upon removal each beaker shall be immediately dried and the contents trans- ferred to a plate or dish by inversion of the beaker. If not less than four out of the six table-jelly sweets shall retain for thirty minutes the general shape of the beaker and shall not at the end of such period have collapsed or split so as to alter their shape, then the setting test shall be deemed to have been satisfied." Here, surely, is a complete refutation of the ill-natured criticisms which sometimes suggest that civil servants earn neither their keep nor the gratitude of their. fellow-citizens. Nobody studying this typical Statutory- Instrument can fail to appreciate the amount of care, thought and anxious deliberation which have gone into its stately prose. An ordinary person might have said, in his crude way: " If a jelly does not set, it does not conform to the setting standard," or perhaps even more laconically, " it. is not a jelly." It takes years of study and practice to express a simple truth like that in appropriate statutory diction.
And yet, even after all the skill of draftsmanship which has been devoted to this enactment, doubts raise their ugly heads. What, for example, is a " plate or dish "? Suppose that the immersed jelly is turned out (or, rather, " transferred by inver- sion ") " on to " a saucer. If common language means anything, you cannot call a saucer a plate ; can you, in violation of all culinary usage, call it a dish? Again, when can a jelly be said to have " collapsed or split "? In hot weather I have seen jellies quiver on their base like Hell's Foundations in the hymn, but it would, have been grossly unfair to them to say that they had collapsed when they were putting up such a gallant fight against the thermometer. I have observed in jellies incipient fissures which have in no wise destroyed their identity ; cannot a fissi- parous jelly still be a jelly?. I seem to discern in this ordinance some nice questions of fact and law for the Divisional Court of the. King's Bench.
It is, indeed, remarkable, and a little depressing, how much trouble this apparently innocent substance, jelly, may cause the whole machinery of government. In the last five years four Statutory Instruments have been necessary to regulate the maxi- mum price of table-jellies. But they are only small cogs in the great legislative machine ; the big wheels were the Supplies and Services (Transitional Powers) Act, 1945, the Supplies and Ser- vices (Extended Purposes) Act, 1947, the Supplies and Services (Defence Purposes) Act, 1951, the Supplies and Services (Con- tinuance) Order, 1950, and two Defence Regulations (55 and 55AB) of 1939. I confess I should never have been able to follow this tortuous path but for the patience and erudition of a writer in the Justice of the Peace, whose help I gratefully acknowledge in issuing this warning of their perilous .legal position to all jelly- addicts. They will have learned, I hope, that jellycraft is not as simple as they thought ; but they may perhaps be still asking themselves whether, when all has been said and drafted and enacted and Supplied and Served, this welfare jelly is really better or cheaper than that of their unregenerate youth.
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