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Persian Cream
Dissolve one ounce of Cox' gelatine in a pint of sweet milk, then strain, place in a saucepan with three ounces of sugar. When it comes to a boil stir into it one-half pint of fresh sweet cream; then add this mixture, at first very slowly in a small quantity to eight ounces of jam or preserved fruit; mix until smooth, and stir until cold, in order that the fruit may not sink to the bottom of mould; when the liquid is added to the fruit and stirred until quite cold, beat briskly together, lastly add the strained juice of a lemon. Put in a mould and let it remain twelve or fourteen hours in a cool place before serving.
A moulded gelatine cream set with jam rather than fresh fruit, of the kind that filled the "fancy dishes" chapter of every turn-of-the-century book. The measurements translate cleanly; the gelatine strength does not.
- The hinge: stir until coldThe whole point of the long stirring is suspension. If the mixture goes into the mould while still warm and thin, the jam sinks and you unmould a plain milk jelly with a fruit layer. Stir until it is cool and visibly thickening, then beat and pour.
- Cox's gelatine, and how much to useCox's came from the Edinburgh firm J. & G. Cox, and was sold in sheet and powdered forms over its history. Nineteenth-century gelatine was generally of lower and less consistent setting strength than modern powder, so the weights in old recipes tend to run high. One ounce of today's powdered gelatine (four 1/4-oz envelopes) for a pint of milk plus half a pint of cream would set rubbery-firm. Two to two and a half envelopes is nearer the mark for a cream that trembles.
- Dissolve means bloomSprinkle the gelatine over a little of the cold milk and let it stand five minutes before combining with the rest and heating. Powder tipped straight into hot milk clumps; the straining step in the original will catch any undissolved lumps.
- Sweet milk and sweet creamSimply fresh whole milk and fresh cream, specified in opposition to sour milk or soured cream, both of which were still ordinary kitchen ingredients. Use whole milk and heavy or whipping cream.
- Do not actually boil it"When it comes to a boil" is looser than it sounds. Gelatine loses setting power with prolonged boiling, and milk scorches. Heat only until the sugar and gelatine are fully dissolved and steam rises.
- MeasuresA pint is 2 cups, half a pint 1 cup. Three ounces of sugar is a scant half cup; eight ounces of jam is by weight, roughly three-quarters of a cup. Taste before adding all the sugar, since the jam is already sweet.
- The lemon goes in last for a reasonAcid added to hot milk curdles it and weakens the set. Add the strained juice of one lemon only when the mixture is cold and thickened, then beat it in.
- Setting and unmouldingTwelve to fourteen hours "in a cool place" means overnight in the refrigerator. Rinse the mould in cold water first, or film it lightly with a neutral oil; to turn out, dip the base in hot water for a few seconds and invert onto a chilled plate.
- YieldAbout 1 quart of mixture, serving six to eight from a single large mould.
"Persian cream" belongs to a family of Victorian and Edwardian moulded creams whose names — Bavarian, Spanish, Russian, Persian — signal little more than fashionable exoticism; the dish is a straightforward jam-flavoured gelatine cream with no documented Persian connection. What makes it a period piece is the brand name in the first line: Cox's gelatine, produced by J. & G. Cox of Edinburgh, named in the recipe as though the reader would know it without explanation. Before packaged gelatine, a cook wanting a moulded cream had to boil down calves' feet or isinglass for hours. That convenience is exactly why the "fancy dishes" chapter of a book like this one runs so heavily to jellies, creams and charlottes, all of them relying on a cool larder and a decorative tin mould, the two pieces of equipment a modern reader is most likely to be short of.