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Bohemian Creams
One quart cream, two table-spoons sugar, one ounce gelatine soaked in water until dissolved, whip half the cream (rich milk may be substituted for cream) to a stiff froth; boil the other half with the sugar and a vanilla bean until a flavor is extracted (or vanilla extract may be added just after it is removed from the fire), take off the fire, add the gelatine, and when cooled a little stir in the well-beaten yolks of the four eggs. As soon as it begins to thicken, stir steadily until smooth, when add the whipped cream, beating it in lightly. Mold and set on ice until ready to serve. To flavor with strawberries, strain two pounds berries through a colander, sweeten to taste, add to the dissolved gelatine, set on ice,, and when it thickens stir until smooth, add the whipped cream as above, and mold.
To flavor with peach, boil a dozen and a half choice fruit, sweeten and strain through a colander; add the dissolved gelatine and a teacup of cream, set on ice, and when it thickens stir until smooth,. add the whipped cream, and mold.
To flavor with pine-apple, cut fine, boil with half a pound pulverized sugar, strain through a colander, add the dissolved gela-- tine, set on ice, and when it thickens stir until smooth, add the whipped cream, and mold. Canned pine-apples may be used instead of fresh... In all these never add whipped cream until the mass is cool and begins to thicken. -Mrs. W. R. Jones, Pittsburgh, Pa...
This is a Bavarian cream in all but name, and the header list is incomplete: the four egg yolks appear only in the method, and the gelatine quantity is wildly generous by modern standards. Read the whole paragraph before you start.
- The gelatine is the thing to adjustOne ounce of the gelatine sold in the 1870s was probably not the equivalent of one ounce of today's powder, which is more consistently strong. For a quart of cream, something in the range of one to two envelopes of powdered gelatine (roughly 2 1/2 to 4 1/2 teaspoons) should hold a mold while still melting on the tongue; a full ounce would give a much firmer, rubbery set.
- Bloom, then dissolve"Soaked in water until dissolved" means softened in cold water. Powdered gelatine needs 5 minutes in a few tablespoons of cold water, then it dissolves fully in the hot cream. Undissolved granules show up as gritty specks that never disappear.
- The yolks need real heatThe recipe adds beaten yolks to cream that has been taken off the fire and cooled "a little," which may or may not bring them to a safe temperature. Return the mixture to low heat and stir to 175-180F (it will coat a spoon) before straining, or use pasteurized eggs. Do not let it boil or it will scramble.
- Sweeten more than it saysTwo tablespoons of sugar per quart of cream is barely sweet, and the fruit versions rely on "sweeten to taste." A third to a half cup of sugar in the custard base suits most modern palates, less if the fruit puree is already sugared.
- The hinge: temperature when you foldThe closing line is the important one. Fold in the whipped cream only when the base has cooled and just begun to thicken at the edges. Too warm and the cream melts and the mixture separates into a foam layer over a jelly layer; too cold and the base sets in lumps you cannot smooth out.
- Fresh pineapple must be cookedRaw pineapple contains bromelain, which breaks down gelatine and leaves the cream soupy. The recipe's instruction to boil it with the sugar deactivates the enzyme, so do not shortcut it with raw fruit. Canned pineapple, as noted, is already heat-treated and safe with gelatine.
- "Set on ice"Packed in ice, or in an icebox; the refrigerator does the same job. Allow at least 4 hours, and overnight for a large mold.
- UnmoldingRinse the mold with cold water before filling, and to turn out, dip it in warm water for 5 to 10 seconds and invert onto a chilled plate. A metal mold releases far more readily than glass or ceramic.
- YieldA quart of cream plus fruit puree will fill a mold of two quarts or more and serve roughly 10 to 12. The fruit variations as written omit the yolks, so they will be lighter and softer than the vanilla.
Bavarian cream — custard, gelatine and whipped cream folded together and molded — reached American cookbooks through French professional cookery, where it appears as bavarois; the reason a Pittsburgh contributor to an Ohio community cookbook calls hers "Bohemian" is anybody's guess. What makes the recipe worth reading is the fruit variations: they drop the eggs entirely and set a sweetened purée with gelatine before folding in whipped cream, which is essentially the modern fruit mousse. Commercial gelatine was still a relatively new convenience in 1877 — cooks of the previous generation had boiled calves' feet or isinglass for hours to get the same effect — and the confident "one ounce gelatine" here suggests how much easier a molded cream had become to produce.