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Chocolate Charlotte Russe
One-half ounce Cooper's isinglass, soak in one cup cold water, three tablespoons grated chocolate, one-half cup milk, one teacup powdered sugar, four eggs, one pint cream or milk, heat the cream or milk to boiling, add the sugar, chocolate, isinglass and beaten yolks, and boil five or ten minutes, take it from the fire, beat the whites to a stiff froth and stir in; line a mould with a sponge cake and fill with the mixture; if cream is used whip it. This must be made in a farina kettle or a tin pail placed in a pot of boiling water.
A gelatin-set chocolate cream lining a sponge-cake mould, from the era before packaged gelatin behaved predictably. Two things in the method need rethinking: the long boil and the raw whites.
- Isinglass and its modern stand-inCooper's isinglass was a commercially packaged gelatin sold by weight. Half an ounce is about 14 g, or two envelopes of modern powdered gelatin, softened in the cup of cold water as directed.
- Do not boil the gelatinFive to ten minutes at a boil will weaken a modern gelatin's set and can scramble the yolks outright. Cook the custard in the double boiler until it coats a spoon, around 175F, then stir the softened gelatin in off the heat until dissolved.
- Farina kettleA farina kettle is a double boiler, and the recipe's own fallback -- a tin pail in a pot of boiling water -- says exactly what to improvise. Never set the pan on direct heat.
- Grated chocolateMost likely unsweetened baking chocolate. Three tablespoons grated is a little under an ounce; the sugar in the recipe carries the sweetness.
- Powdered sugar and the teacupNineteenth-century powdered sugar was finely ground granulated, without the cornstarch in today's confectioners' sugar; superfine sugar is the closer match. A teacup is smaller than a measuring cup -- read it as about three-quarters of a cup, and adjust to taste.
- The raw whitesThe beaten whites go in after the pan leaves the fire and are never brought to temperature. Use pasteurized whites, or heat them with a little of the sugar over the double boiler before whipping, if the dessert is for children, the elderly or anyone pregnant.
- Cream or milkThe pint of cream or milk is the body of the dessert. If cream, whip it and fold it in once the custard has cooled to lukewarm and begun to thicken; folded into a hot base it will simply melt and the mixture will separate as it sets.
- Lining the mouldSplit sponge cake or ladyfingers, cut to fit the bottom and stood upright around the sides, trimmed flush. It needs four to six hours in the refrigerator to set firm.
Charlotte russe is generally traced to Antonin Carême, who is said to have renamed an English apple charlotte in honour of his Russian patron, and by the late nineteenth century it was a familiar American company dessert: a mould lined with cake and filled with a set cream, requiring no oven at serving time. The isinglass here marks the recipe's date. True isinglass came from the swim bladders of sturgeon and was the clearest setting agent available; by the late nineteenth century American firms, Cooper's among them, were selling prepared gelatin under the same familiar name, which is why a cookbook can specify a brand and a weight rather than telling the cook to boil down calves' feet. That shift, from a two-day kitchen operation to a half-ounce paper packet, is what put moulded creams into ordinary household books like this one.