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Basket, Chantilly
This basket is pretty, but skill is required to make it successfully. Make a cement of sugar boiled to crackling height. (See SUGAR, BOILING.) Dip the edge of some macaroons into it, and line with them a mould shaped liked a basket, taking care that the edges of the macaroons touch each other. When wanted take it out of the mould, fill it with whipped cream, and it is then ready for table. Time, two or three hours to set. Cost for quart mould, exclusive of cream, 1s. 6d. Sufficient for five or six persons.
A construction rather than a cooked dish: hard-crack sugar is the glue, macaroons are the bricks, and whipped cream is the filling. Everything depends on the sugar.
- "Crackling height"The old name for what is now called the hard crack stage, 300-310F on a sugar thermometer. Below that the syrup stays tacky and the basket sags; above it the sugar darkens and turns bitter.
- Working with the sugarHard-crack syrup sets in seconds and is far hotter than boiling water. Keep the pan over the barest heat or in a bowl of hot water while you dip, and have the mould and all the macaroons laid out before you begin.
- Which macaroonsVictorian macaroons are the almond kind - ground almonds, sugar and egg white, crisp and flat-bottomed, closest to an Italian amaretto or a plain almond macaroon. Coconut macaroons or French macaron shells are too soft and too domed to hold a wall.
- The mouldA quart basin, charlotte mould or fluted jelly mould works. Line it with oiled parchment or brush it very lightly with a flavourless oil, or the stray sugar will weld the basket in place.
- Setting timeThe recipe allows two to three hours to set, though it does not say why; hard-crack sugar itself hardens in seconds, so the interval is presumably to let the assembled basket firm up and be safely turned out. Damp is the enemy either way - hard-crack sugar draws moisture from humid air and goes sticky, so this is a poor thing to attempt on a wet day.
- Chantilly creamCream whipped to soft peaks with a little caster sugar and vanilla. Fill only just before serving; moisture from the cream will soften the macaroons and work on the sugar seams.
- Yield and costA quart mould gives five or six portions, as the recipe states. The 1s 6d covers the macaroons and sugar only, the cream being excluded.
Crème Chantilly - cream whipped with sugar and vanilla - is generally traced to the kitchens of the Château de Chantilly north of Paris, and popular tradition attaches it to François Vatel, maître d'hôtel there in the 1660s, though the attribution is legend rather than record and the name only becomes common in French cookery writing much later. Whipped cream served in an edible container belongs to a wider family of such assemblies: baskets, cases, croustades and borders built from macaroons, pastry, spun sugar or bread, all meant to arrive whole on the table and be broken up in front of the company. The candid opening line - pretty, but skill is required - is unusual frankness.