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Charlotte Russe (Two coffee-cups rich cream one)
Two coffee-cups rich cream, one tea-cup milk, two tablespoons gelatine soaked in a very little cold milk for two or three hours; whip the cream very stiff, and set it on the ice; boil the milk and gradually pour it over the gelatine until dissolved, then strain; when about cold add the whipped cream, a large spoonful at a time, sweeten with pulverized or granulated sugar, and flavor with vanilla. Line a dish with lady fingers or sponge cake, pour in the cream and set in a cool place to harden.
A cold gelatine cream set in a ladyfinger case — closer to a Bavarian cream than to a baked charlotte. The measurements are in nineteenth-century cups, and the gelatine is the one thing worth thinking about before you start.
- Coffee-cup and tea-cupPeriod usage varied, but a coffee-cup is usually reckoned at about 1 cup (8 fl oz) and a tea-cup at about 3/4 cup (6 fl oz). On that reading, roughly 2 cups heavy cream and 3/4 cup milk.
- GelatineTwo tablespoons of modern granulated gelatine works out nearer two and a half to three 1/4-oz envelopes, and the shredded gelatine of the day was weaker again, so it is worth starting at the lower end for this volume. Soften it in a few tablespoons of the cold milk; twenty minutes is usually enough with modern powder, where the recipe's two or three hours suits the coarser shredded product it probably means.
- SweeteningNo quantity is given. About 1/3 to 1/2 cup sugar suits 2 cups of cream; superfine dissolves best in a cold mixture. The original's "pulverized" sugar meant finely ground sugar, which is not quite the same as modern confectioner's sugar with its added starch.
- The hinge — temperatureThe gelatine milk must be cool and syrupy but not set when it meets the cream. Too warm and it deflates the cream into a soup; already jelled and it breaks into rubbery flecks that will not fold in. Stir it over a bowl of ice water until it just thickens at the edge of the spoon.
- Folding, not stirringAdding the cream a large spoonful at a time is the point of the method: it tempers the two mixtures to the same temperature. Fold with a spatula rather than beating.
- Lining the dishTrim the ladyfingers flat on one end and stand them upright around a straight-sided mould or a springform pan, with a layer laid in the base. Brushing them lightly with sherry or milk keeps them from tasting like dry biscuit.
- Setting time"A cool place" meant the icebox or a cellar. Four hours in the refrigerator will set it; overnight is better if you plan to unmould. To turn it out, dip the mould briefly in warm water and invert onto a plate.
- YieldEnough for a 1 1/2-quart mould, serving six to eight.
Charlotte russe is generally traced to Antonin Carême, who is said to have renamed an earlier charlotte à la parisienne in honour of Tsar Alexander I, in whose service he briefly worked; the "russe" is the Russian connection rather than any Russian technique. It is a cold dish and quite distinct from the older English apple charlotte, which is baked in bread. What makes it a period piece is the gelatine: commercially packaged gelatine became cheap and reliable in American kitchens in the later nineteenth century, and cooks who had previously boiled calves' feet for hours to get a setting jelly could suddenly make an elegant moulded cream in an afternoon. Charlotte russe turns up often in American household manuals of the era for exactly that reason — it looked like restaurant work and required no oven.