65/56

A glass jelly mould, used for making brawn (chopped pieces of animal heads in a meat jelly).

1 jelly mould: clear glass; good condition

MERL ‘Handwritten catalogue’ form – ‘JELLY MOULD // 65/56 // Domestic – Preparing Food // ... // Glass [pencil sketch].’, John Woodforde, ‘The Observer’s Book of Kitchen Antiques’, p.91 (MERL 6980) – ‘Brawn mouth 19th century // Brawn was a dish regularly made at home, especially where a pig was kept for fattening. It consists of chopped pieces of animals’ heads in a meat jelly. The moulds could be ordinary jelly moulds, but they came to be more generally made of glass, as above, or of earthenware; a metal disc was employed for weighting down and compressing the brawn. In The Farm on the Hill, Faber, 1941, Alison Uttley relates that in her childhood ‘pigsheads were made into brawns, spiced and flavoured from an old recipe’ and that ‘Brawns made excellent presents’. ’