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Charlotte-Russe (Cut stale sponge-cake into)
Cut stale sponge-cake into slices about half an inch thick and line three molds with them, leaving a space of half an inch between each slice; set the molds where they will not be disturbed until the filling is ready; take a deep tin pan and fill about onethird full of either snow or pounded ice, and into this set another pan that will hold at least four quarts. Into a deep bowl or pail (a whip-churn is better) put one and a half pints of cream (if the cream is thick take one pint of cream and a half pint of milk), whip to a froth, and when the bowl is full, skim the froth into the pan which is standing on the ice, and repeat this until the cream is all froth; then with the spoon draw the froth to one side, and you will find that some of the cream has gone back to milk; turns this into the bowl again, and whip as before; when the cream is all whipped, stir into it two-thirds cup powdered sugar, one teaspoon vanilla, and half a box gelatine, which has been soaked in cold water enough to cover it for one hour and then dissolved in boiling water enough to dissolve it (about half a cup), stir from the bottom of the pan until it begins to grow stiff; fill the molds and set them on the ice in the pan for one hour, or until they are sent to the table. When ready to dish them, loosen lightly at the sides and turn out on a flat dish; have the cream ice-cold when you begin to whip it, and it is a good plan to put a lump of ice into the cream while whipping it. - M.. Parloa..
A pre-refrigerator charlotte russe: whipped cream set with gelatine inside a sponge-cake shell, chilled on ice. Most of the labor in the original comes from equipment problems that no longer exist.
- Skip the skimmingThe skim-and-rewhip routine exists because 19th-century cream separated as it was beaten, and because a bowl and whisk gave you froth on top and thin milk below. Modern homogenized heavy cream (36% or more) whips uniformly in a chilled bowl; whip to soft-to-medium peaks and stop, or the mixture will be grainy once the gelatine sets.
- How much gelatine"Half a box" is the real ambiguity here. Gelatine boxes of the period commonly held about an ounce, so half a box is roughly a half-ounce, or two standard envelopes (about 4 1/2 teaspoons) of modern powdered gelatine. That is a firm set for 1 1/2 pints of cream; 1 1/2 envelopes gives a softer, more contemporary texture.
- Bloom and dissolveAn hour of soaking in cold water is generous but harmless. Modern gelatine blooms in five minutes. Dissolve it in the half cup of hot water, then let it cool to just warm before adding, and add it in a thin stream while stirring, or it will set in threads on contact with the cold cream.
- The hingeEverything depends on temperature matching. The cream must be ice-cold and the gelatine barely warm. Stir from the bottom, as the recipe says, and fill the molds the moment the mixture begins to thicken. Wait longer and it sets in the pan; fill sooner and the gelatine sinks.
- Ice bathThe nested pans and pounded ice are simply a working refrigerator. A metal bowl set in ice water does the same thing, or just work fast in a cool kitchen. Molds go in the refrigerator rather than on ice.
- Chilling timeOne hour on ice suited a mixture already half-set from the cold pan. In a refrigerator, allow three to four hours, and overnight is better if you want a clean turn-out.
- Cream substitutionThe note about thick cream plus milk reflects unstandardized farm cream. Use heavy or whipping cream straight; do not thin it with milk, which will only make the gelatine work harder.
- Unmolding and yieldRun a thin knife around the edge as the recipe directs; a brief dip in warm water can help, though it risks softening the cake lining. The recipe gives no yield or mold size, so servings will depend entirely on the molds used. The cake lining is easier to cut cleanly if the sponge is genuinely stale, as the recipe specifies.
Charlotte russe is generally traced to Antonin Carême in the early 19th century, a Bavarian cream set inside a wall of cake or ladyfingers and named, by tradition, in the Russian style for his patron. By the 1870s it had become a standard American company dessert, and this version carries the byline of Maria Parloa, one of the best-known cooking teachers of the period and an early instructor at the Boston Cooking School, which was established in 1879 by the Woman's Education Association. The recipe says a good deal about the kitchen it was written for: the elaborate instructions for nesting pans in snow or pounded ice are there because a household ice supply, not a machine, was the only way to hold whipped cream, and because a box of gelatine and unstandardized farm cream both behaved unpredictably enough to need a paragraph of coaching.