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Apricot Cream
Take a dozen and a half ripe apricots: pare, stone, and halve them, and place them in a saucepan with a cupful of sugar dissolved in a cupful of water. Let them simmer gently until they are reduced to pulp, when they must be pressed through a fine sieve, and put aside to cool. Boil a pint and a half of new milk or cream with three table-spoonfuls of sugar. If these cannot be easily obtained. Swiss milk may be substituted, and will answer very much the same purpose, but it must be remembered that whenever this is used, less sugar will be required. Let it cool after boiling, then put to it the yolks of eight eggs well beaten. Pour this into a jug, which must be placed in a saucepan of boiling water and stirred one way until it thickens. Add one ounce and a half of isinglass which has been boiled in a little water, and when the cream is cold, mix the apricot with it; pour the mixture into a well-oiled mould, and keep it in a cool place. If apricots are out of season, apricot marmalade may be used instead. Time to thicken the cream, ten to fifteen minutes. Probable cost, 4s. 6d., if made with milk, and with apricots at 2d. each.
A moulded Victorian egg custard set with isinglass and flavoured with fresh apricot pulp. The setting agent and the custard temperature are the two things that decide whether it works.
- Isinglass to gelatineIsinglass was fish swim-bladder collagen, variable in strength and much less refined than modern gelatine, so the ounce and a half is not a straight swap. For roughly 2.5 pints of finished mixture that must stand unmoulded, count on about 21 g (three standard envelopes) of powdered gelatine, bloomed in cold water and dissolved in a little hot liquid rather than boiled.
- Imperial pintsA pint here is 20 fl oz, so a pint and a half is 30 fl oz, or about 3 3/4 US cups. The "cupful" of sugar and cupful of water for the fruit are approximate by nature and can be treated as 8 fl oz each.
- Custard temperatureThe jug set in boiling water is a bain-marie, and it exists to keep eight yolks from scrambling. Take the custard to 175-180F (80-82C), when it coats the back of a spoon, and no further. The instruction to stir "one way" is old kitchen lore with no effect on the result; constant stirring is what matters.
- Swiss milkThis is sweetened condensed milk, widely sold in Britain from around the 1870s under Swiss brand names. The recipe says only that less sugar will be needed if you use it; in practice you can cut or drop the three tablespoonfuls altogether, and thin the tinned milk with water to make up the 30 fl oz, or the cream will be cloying.
- ApricotsA dozen and a half ripe apricots is roughly 1 1/2 to 2 lb whole, and a little under that once stoned and pared. "Pare" means skinning them, which is easiest after a 30-second blanch. Apricot marmalade, the winter substitute named in the text, is a thick sweetened puree closer to today's apricot jam; reduce the added sugar if you use it.
- The mouldOil the mould with a flavourless oil, not butter, which sets solid and makes turning out ragged. Chill at least six hours, and preferably overnight, for a cream of this volume.
- YieldAbout 2.5 pints of mixture, serving eight to ten. The cost note of 4s 6d, with apricots at 2d each, marks this as an expensive dish for a household with a fruit budget.
Moulded creams like this one occupy the middle ground of the Victorian sweet course: a boiled custard, a fruit purée, and enough setting agent to let the whole thing be turned out and carved at table. Isinglass, prepared from the swim bladders of sturgeon and other fish, was the standard gelling agent of the period and was sold in sheets, shreds and ribbons of widely differing strength, which is why nineteenth-century recipes so often give vague or generous quantities. The alternative offered here is telling: Cassell's assumes a reader who may not have reliable access to fresh milk or cream, and points her instead to tinned sweetened condensed milk, which by the 1870s and 1880s had become an ordinary urban pantry item. The same practicality governs the closing note that apricot marmalade will do out of season, and the costing in shillings and pence, a feature Cassell's carried throughout so that a cook could weigh a dish against the week's housekeeping money.