It began with one mould. Tarnished copper, its gleaming flashes of reddish-gold peaking through a muted patina, the kind of patina that comes through years of heavy use followed by years of neglect. It was a round, tall mould with a generic floral decoration on the top, and pleasing scalloped fluting on the sides. I found it at a flea market, hidden among a pile of other bits and bobs, long fallen out of use and longer since out of fashion. There was nothing especially noteworthy about that particular copper mould – you might uncharitably have called it junk – but I liked it. I felt some sort of gravitational pull towards it and to the somewhat romanticised notion that I might become the kind of cook who makes jellies and aspics and who cooks with ornate-looking moulds. And so I bought it.
Copper moulds, it turns out, are wonderfully practical things to cook with: the copper conducts the heat more evenly than most other materials, so when it comes to turning out your jelly (and, inspired by the mould, I did make jelly), it slips out with the kind of effortless ease that can’t help but generate a very deep feeling of satisfaction. It even sounds satisfying: a triumphant squidge, not unlike the sound of a plunger.
Encouraged – and somewhat emboldened – by my happy little adventures in jelly, I pounced on the next lot of copper moulds that I came across. These came as a set of four and I found them at our local antique market where I sometimes go when I’m procrastinating, avoiding deadlines or ignoring real life. It can be hit and miss at that particular market, so the four moulds, a job lot, each bearing a different fruit (a strawberry, a bunch of grapes, what looks like a rather naive representation of a pomegranate, and a single pear) felt like an especially fortuitous find. These moulds were smaller than the big round one I already owned, circular and shallow, with the fruits in relief (so their pattern can translate in all its intricate detail on to the jiggly contents of the copper). I thought they might work well, should I want to make individual little pannacottas, and so I bought the set. I went home to meet the deadline I had been avoiding, and moved on with my life. A few days later, I made pannacotta. It worked a treat.
By this time, whenever I saw an old copper mould, I felt like it had my name on it. I wasn’t seeking them out, but they were finding me, moulds of all different shapes and sizes: the big, tall oval one that I used the first time I made rhubarb-and-prosecco jelly; the shallow oval one with the three little Beatrix-Potter-esque ducks on it; the lobster-shaped one (it was an exciting day when I happened upon the little lobster); the pineapple one (also quite a thrill); the cat and the squirrel that my friend Charlotte thoughtfully sent me in the post. I made a Black Velvet jelly with the cat: Guinness and a splash of vodka with just a little gelatine, then thick set cream for the paws, nose and the tip of the tail, snowy white against the jet black of the feline body. I dined off the fun of that black jelly cat for weeks.
Before long, I had the beginnings of a collection: some of the moulds dating back as far as Victorian times, others from the 1950s and 60s, some new and shiny – though I’ve never come to love the new and shiny ones quite so much as I love the ones that look like they’ve lived many lives before me.
Like all collections, this one is growing. The moulds started to pile up on my kitchen shelves: a clattery mountain of copper gathering dust, and so I decided to hang them on the wall. The shapes look pleasing, like miniatures or paintings, and I can better make sense of what I have when I can stand back and admire all the copper together. I love how they look; and much like a good painting, they catch me sometimes while I’m working in the kitchen. Just the sight of the moulds from the corner of my eye sparks some kind of joy inside me. I make jelly regularly now because I like eating jelly; and I realise that I like how the making of the jelly makes me feel about myself: confident, capable, cosy. That’s the wonder of cooking. And sometimes I marvel at how something so unremarkable as a blackened piece of metal, something that holds so little by way of tangible or monetary value, has come to be so very meaningful to me. But then, that’s the wonder of things.
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