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Whipped Cream (One and one-half pints good)
One and one-half pints good rich cream sweetened and flavored to taste, three tea-spoons vanilla; whip to a stiff froth. Dissolve three-fourths ounce best gelatine in a small tea-cup hot water, and when cool pour into the cream; stir thoroughly, pour in molds and set on ice, or in very cool place. - Mrs. Emma Craig, Washingten, D. C.
A molded gelatin cream, essentially a plain Bavarian without the custard base. The whole thing turns on how the gelatine meets the cream.
- The hinge: gelatine temperatureThe dissolved gelatine must be cool enough not to slacken the whipped cream but still fully liquid. If it chills to the point of thickening in the cup, it will seize into rubbery threads the instant it hits cold cream. Pour it in a thin stream while whisking, and work fast.
- Gelatine strength has changedThree-quarters of an ounce is about 21 g, or three standard envelopes of modern powdered gelatin. The recipe does not say what form of gelatine is meant; period commercial gelatine came in sheets, shreds or granules and was less consistent in strength than today's product, so treat the weight as a starting point. Two envelopes in 3 cups of cream gives a tender set, three gives something firm enough to unmold and slice.
- Bloom it firstThe original simply says dissolve in hot water. Modern powdered gelatin should be sprinkled over a few tablespoons of cold water and left to swell for five minutes, then dissolved in the hot water — a "small tea-cup" is roughly half to three-quarters of a cup — until no grains remain.
- QuantitiesOne and a half pints is 3 cups of heavy cream, which whips to roughly six cups. Sweetening is left to taste; 1/3 to 1/2 cup of sugar suits most palates, added as the cream reaches soft peaks.
- VanillaThree teaspoons is a heavy hand by modern standards, though period vanilla extracts varied a good deal in strength and quality. Start with two and taste.
- "Set on ice"This means the icebox or an ice-packed tub. Four hours in the refrigerator will set it; overnight is better if you intend to unmold.
- UnmoldingRinse the molds with cold water before filling and do not grease them. Dip the filled mold briefly in warm water and invert onto a chilled plate.
- YieldServes eight to ten in small molds, or fills one 1.5-quart mold.
Buckeye Cookery and Practical Housekeeping (1877) belongs to the great wave of American community cookbooks, built from recipes signed by the women who sent them in — here Mrs. Emma Craig of Washington, D.C. Molded creams like this one were fashionable parlor desserts in the 1870s, and their spread owed much to commercial gelatine, which by then could be bought in sheets or shreds rather than rendered at home from calves' feet, a day's boiling and skimming. The instruction to "set on ice" is a quiet marker of period and class: in towns, household ice was generally a purchased commodity, delivered and stored in an icebox, though many rural households cut and stored their own, and a dessert that required it was not an everyday one. The alternative offered — "or in very cool place" — is the cellar or the north pantry, and may suggest that not every reader had ice to hand.