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Bavaroise, or Bohemian Cream Jelly
Remove the stalks from one pound of strawberries, and bruise the fruit slightly. Put it with four ounces of loaf sugar, one ounce of isinglass, and three-quarters of a pint of water into a saucepan, bring the mixture to a boil, and let it simmer for ten minutes. Strain through a jelly-bag into a basin, and set it aside to cool. When just becoming a light jelly whip a quarter of a pint of cream to a stiff froth, and add the jelly, spoonful by spoonful, to it, beating all the time. The slight sediment at the bottom of the basin must not be added. Beat the bavaroise for about ten minutes until it becomes very thick, and put in a quarter of a teaspoonful of cochineal, which must be well beaten in. Pour into a well wetted mould, and put in a cool place (in the refrigerator if possible) to set. Probable cost, 1s. 8d. NOTE.--Any other fruit of delicate flavour may be used instead of strawberries, the process being exactly the same.
A Victorian fruit bavarois: a strawberry jelly whipped into cream and set in a mould. The technique is sound, but the setting agent and the colouring both need translating.
- Isinglass to gelatineIsinglass is dried sturgeon swim bladder, sold in sheets or shreds and still used for fining beer but rarely for jelly. Its setting power varied a great deal by grade, so no conversion is exact; as a working figure, replace the ounce with about 15 g of powdered gelatine or seven or eight leaves, bloomed in cold water first. Test a spoonful on a cold saucer before moulding.
- Do not boil the gelatine hardThe ten-minute simmer suits isinglass, which needs long heat to dissolve. Modern gelatine loses strength if held at a rolling boil, so simmer the fruit and sugar first and stir the bloomed gelatine in off the heat.
- Imperial measuresThe pint here is 20 fl oz, so three-quarters of a pint is 15 fl oz (about 425 ml) and the quarter-pint of cream is 5 fl oz (about 140-150 ml). Cream roughly doubles in volume when whipped stiff.
- Loaf sugarLoaf or lump sugar was refined cane broken from a cone and crushed as needed. Ordinary granulated or caster sugar is a direct substitute; four ounces is about 115 g.
- CochinealVictorian cochineal was a liquid tincture of carmine, far weaker than the concentrated carmine powder sold now. If you use a modern colouring, add it drop by drop. Ripe strawberries give a decent pink on their own and the colouring can simply be left out.
- The hinge: catch the jelly at the right momentThe jelly must be syrupy and just beginning to set before it meets the cream. Too warm and it slackens the whipped cream into liquid; too cold and it seizes into rubbery threads through the mixture. Stand the basin in cold water and stir until it thickens to the consistency of unbeaten egg white, then add it to the cream a spoonful at a time.
- Chilling and turning outGive it four hours in the refrigerator, longer for a large mould. To unmould, dip the mould in hot water for three or four seconds, no more, and invert onto a wetted plate so the cream can be slid into position.
- YieldAbout a pint and a half of finished mixture, serving four to six. The cost of 1s 8d is for the whole mould.
Bavaroise in the French kitchen originally meant a hot drink of tea, syrup and sometimes spirit, and the cold moulded cream that took the name is generally traced to the early nineteenth-century Paris pastry trade rather than to Bavaria itself; Carême described the fromage bavarois, a custard or fruit base set with isinglass and lightened with whipped cream. Cassell's calls it a "Bohemian cream jelly" as well, a loose bit of naming typical of English cookery books, which cheerfully attached central European place names to elaborate moulded sweets. The dish belonged to the era when a well-set mould was the centrepiece of a supper table and isinglass, expensive and fishy if badly clarified, was the mark of a careful cook; the note that any delicate fruit will serve reflects how these books were used, as a single method to be run through whatever the garden or the market offered.