The article by Daisy Dawnay on jelly (“Jelly moulds”, HTSI, FT Weekend, November 25) assumes moulds were meant just for jelly. But for my postwar family, Sunday lunch ended with blancmange, a shape — a packet mix offering three flavours, raspberry, strawberry and vanilla, set in a mould, either rabbit, pyramid or fish. Strawberry in rabbit was best. In Paul Scott’s A Division of the Spoils, set in the dying days of the Raj in India, Sarah Layton offers Guy Perron lunch: “It’s only soup, cold chicken and salad, and what Aunt Fenny calls a shape. In other words, blancmange.” Guy is up for it: “I’m rather partial to shape.”
Weren’t we all in postwar Britain. Not jelly, but milk pudding: shape. Not even a shape, just shape. Bliss!
Gillian Fenwick
Toronto, Canada
