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Strawberry Cream
Rub two quarts strawberries, to get rid of the seeds, add to the juice thus obtained two cups sugar, half a box of gelatine, soaked in half a cup of cold water for two hours, then add nearly a cup boiling water; whip a pint of cream and stir through this, putting it into moulds and placing it on the ice to harden.
A late-Victorian moulded cream that depends entirely on temperature control: the dissolved gelatine and the whipped cream have to meet in the middle, or the dish separates into a rubbery layer under a foam.
- The hinge: cool the gelatine before it meets the creamDissolve the soaked gelatine fully in the boiling water, stir it into the sweetened juice, then let the mixture stand until it is cool and just beginning to thicken to the consistency of raw egg white. Hot gelatine poured into whipped cream will melt it, and cream folded into set gelatine will stay lumpy.
- Half a box of gelatineA period box of granulated gelatine held about 1 oz, so half a box is roughly 1/2 oz, or two of today's 1/4 oz envelopes (about 4 1/2 teaspoons). Boxes were not standardised, so treat this as an estimate; two envelopes will set roughly a quart of liquid to an unmoulding firmness.
- "Rub" the berriesPress two quarts of hulled strawberries through a fine sieve or food mill with the back of a ladle. A blender will not remove seeds and will aerate the purée; sieve after blending if you use one. Expect roughly 3 to 4 cups of pulp and juice, depending on the berries.
- SugarTwo cups is very sweet by modern taste, and suits firm, tart field berries better than modern ones. With supermarket berries, start at one cup, taste the cold purée, and add from there — chilling mutes sweetness, so it should taste slightly too sweet warm.
- A pint of creamTwo cups of heavy or whipping cream, whipped to soft peaks only. Stiff cream folds in poorly and leaves streaks. Fold it in with a spatula rather than stirring; "stir through" here probably amounts to what we would call folding.
- Moulds and "on the ice"The icebox equals the refrigerator: chill 4 to 6 hours, or overnight. Rinse the moulds with cold water before filling and they will release more cleanly; dip briefly in warm water to unmould.
- YieldLarge: the sweetened juice, water and whipped cream together come to something like 8 or 9 cups, enough for 10 to 12 in individual moulds. A single 6-cup mould will not hold it.
Moulded creams like this one belong to the moment when gelatine stopped being a luxury. For most of the nineteenth century a cook wanting a set cream boiled calves' feet or isinglass for hours and clarified the result; packaged gelatine was sold in America from the middle of the century, and by the 1880s and 1890s granulated and sheet gelatine in small boxes had become commonplace, with cookbooks measuring by the box or half-box as casually as by the cup. The dish itself is a simplified Bavarian cream \ ruit purée, sugar, gelatine and whipped cream, without the custard base. The two quarts of strawberries point to a summer table supplied by a garden or a local market, when berries came in quantity and briefly.