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BAVAROISE (a la Vanille)
Put four ounces of loaf sugar, half a pint of milk, and half a vanilla pod into a stewpan, and bring slowly to the boil. Beat the yolks of four eggs and pour into the milk when boiling. Keep the pan on the fire and stir till the contents thicken, then take out the vanilla and strain. Dissolve three-quarters of an ounce of French gelatine in half a gill of water, strain into the above mixture, let it cool a little, and add half a pint of cream previously whipped. Fill a mould, place it in a basin surrounded with crushed ice; turn on to a dish with folded napkin, and serve. Probable cost, 2s.
A classic egg-custard bavarois, set with gelatine and lightened with whipped cream. The whole thing hinges on cooking the custard to the point of thickening without letting it boil.
- Imperial measuresCassell's half-pint is 10 imperial fluid ounces, about 1¼ US cups. A gill is 5 fl oz, so half a gill is 2½ fl oz, roughly 5 tablespoons of water for the gelatine.
- Loaf sugarRefined sugar sold in a hard cone, chipped or crushed before use. Four ounces (115 g) of ordinary granulated sugar is the same thing, and it will dissolve faster.
- The custard is the whole dishOnce the yolks go in, the milk must not return to a boil or the eggs scramble and no amount of straining will rescue the texture. Cook over gentle heat, stirring constantly, until it coats the back of a spoon — 175-180F on a thermometer — then take it off at once.
- French gelatineNineteenth-century sheet gelatine was not sold to any standard strength, so results were likely more variable than with modern product. Three-quarters of an ounce is about 21 g, which with modern leaf or powdered gelatine gives a firm, sliceable mould of the old sort; for a softer, spoonable set closer to modern taste, half that quantity is nearer the mark. Powder should be sprinkled over the cold water and left to swell before dissolving.
- Adding the cream"Let it cool a little" means cool to barely warm, stirring now and then. Fold whipped cream into a hot base and it deflates; fold it into a base that has begun to set and you get lumps of jelly through it.
- ChillingThe ice-filled basin was the Victorian refrigerator. Four hours in the fridge does the same work; overnight is better for a mould of this size.
- Turning outDip the mould in hot water for three or four seconds, no longer, and invert onto the serving dish. A folded napkin under a cold mould was standard presentation, and would also have soaked up any melt water.
- VanillaHalf a pod infused in the milk, then lifted out and the custard strained, as the recipe directs. A teaspoon of extract stirred in off the heat is the substitute.
- YieldRoughly 1¼ pints of liquid before the cream is whipped in; serves about six. The "probable cost, 2s" is the household budgeting note Cassell's attached to its entries.
Bavaroise originally meant something quite different from this: an eighteenth-century hot drink of milk, tea and sugar syrup, said to have been made for Bavarian princes visiting Paris, and served in the cafés of the period. By the nineteenth century French cooks had transferred the name to a cold moulded cream of egg custard, gelatine and whipped cream, which Carême and his successors codified as the bavarois or fromage bavarois. Cassell's keeps the older feminine spelling. Moulded creams were central to a Victorian dinner: they needed no last-minute cooking, and they held their shape on a sideboard.