I also made a lemon posset as a birthday dessert for Dad. I had to look up what a 'posset' was. I thought maybe it was a colloquial term much like fool or flummery, but it is technically a milk punch or drink (eggnog for example is in this family). This dessert is in fact set with unflavored gelatin and the recipe called for gelatin leaves. I have a few period cookbooks that I've picked up in my travels or found online and I've read about gelatin leaves before, but I'd never used them. I have searched for them in grocery stores on every single trip to Europe but I've never found them until this year! We stopped at a huge Tesco store in Thirsk where I also got garam masala and yellow lentils for the Indian cooking I want to fool around with! Going to grocery stores overseas is one of my absolute FAVORITE things to do! I look at EVERYTHING!

It wasn't a horribly complicated recipe though. It calls for 4 (!!!!!) cups of cream that you reduce by a third on the stove, allow it to cool and add your softened and dissolved gelatin leaves, add some lemon juice and sugar whipped into ANOTHER cup of cream, and then allow it to set. The recipe said it would serve 6 when in fact it would serve at least 12! It is so rich that you can't eat much! I also made a sauce from some frozen mixed berries--just cooked them to death and strained/sweetened the sauce. The gelatin package said that 2 leaves were the equivalent of 1 teaspoon of powdered gelatin and I just read somewhere the other day that you could use leaf gelatin for window panes in a gingerbread house! I was amazed at how sturdy they were though! For some reason I thought they'd be very fragile and brittle.