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Genoese Cream
One tablespoon of flour, one of powdered sugar, yolks of three eggs bit of butter the size of half an egg. Rub together the flour and sugar; add one pint of milk and mix it well; set it over a slow fire; when warm, add (without beating) the eggs and butter and stir constantly until it thickens. Drop pieces of sponge cake in wine; lay them in the dish and pour the cream over them. Have some pistachio nuts and citron chopped fine and stir some in the cream while boiling and spread some thickly over the cake just before the cream is poured on it. Flavor with little essence of lemon. Eat it cold. -Mrs. J. C. Spencer.
This is a stirred custard poured over wine-soaked sponge cake — a small trifle by another name. The proportions are lean, so the handling of the eggs is everything.
- The hinge: never let it boilThe hinge: keep the heat low -- "a slow fire" means gentle heat, and a stirred custard is generally judged done at around 175-180F, when it coats a spoon. The recipe itself says to stir the nuts in "while boiling," and the tablespoon of flour gives some protection against curdling, but the safer course is to pull it as soon as it thickens and strain it if any grain appears.
- Adding the yolks unbeatenThe instruction to add the eggs "without beating" to warm milk works only if the milk really is just warm and you stir hard immediately. A steadier route is to whisk the yolks with a ladle of the warm milk before returning them to the pan; the result is much the same.
- Consistency to expectA pint of milk to three yolks and a tablespoon of flour gives a pouring cream, not a set custard. It is meant to soak into the cake and firm up slightly as it chills.
- Essence of lemonNineteenth-century "essence" is an alcohol-based extract. Use about 1/4 teaspoon of lemon extract, or the zest of half a lemon steeped in the milk and strained out.
- CitronCandied citron, the thick peel sold at holidays alongside glacé fruit — not the citronella herb and not lemon peel. Candied orange peel is the usual substitute if citron is unavailable.
- The wineAn unfortified table wine will taste sharp here. Sherry and Madeira were the usual choices for soaking cake in this period; a few spoonfuls brushed on is enough to moisten without sogging.
- Butter measure"The size of half an egg" is somewhere between one and two tablespoons, roughly 25g. The recipe adds it with the eggs, over the heat.
- Yield and servingServes four to six in a shallow dish. Chill at least two hours so the cake absorbs the custard; the recipe's "eat it cold" is a structural instruction as much as a preference.
The name points to Genoa, the Ligurian port long associated with candied citron and, through the Mediterranean trade, pistachios — the two garnishes that give this dish its identity and its green-and-amber speckle. Italian and French cookery lent its prestige to English and American dessert names throughout the nineteenth century, and "Genoese" on a menu generally signalled candied fruit, nuts and sponge cake rather than any documented Genoese original; the related génoise is still the standard whisked sponge of French pastry. Structurally this is a trifle: cake steeped in fortified wine under a boiled custard, a form well established in English households long before this book was printed. The attribution to Mrs. J. C. Spencer marks it as a contributed receipt, the way many turn-of-the-century American compilations are said to have been assembled — subscribers sent in the dishes they were known for, and "fancy dishes" was where the company desserts went.