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CHARLOTTE (a la Parisienne)
Cut a Savoy, sponge, or rice cake into thin horizontal slices, spread some good jam on each slice, and restore the cake to its original shape. Cover it equally with an icing made by mixing the lightly-whisked whites of four eggs with five ounces of pounded loaf sugar. Sift a little more sugar over it, and dry the icing in a gentle oven. Pound cake may be iced in the same way, but, of course, if this is used the jam should be omitted. The Charlotte must remain in a gentle oven till the icing is dry. Probable cost, 1s. 8d. for a medium-sized cake. Sufficient for four or five persons.
An iced layer cake rather than a moulded charlotte, and the only technical step of any consequence is the drying of the meringue icing. Get the oven low enough and the rest follows.
- "Gentle oven"A slow oven, in the region of 250-275F; the book itself gives no temperatures. The icing is being dried rather than baked, and too much heat will colour it. Leave it until the surface is dry and firm, as the recipe directs.
- Savoy and rice cakeA Savoy cake is a whisked sponge, commonly baked in a fluted mould. Rice cake is a Victorian sponge made with ground rice or rice flour, drier and finer-grained than a wheat sponge. Any firm, close-crumbed sponge stands in for either; an airy modern chiffon will tear when sliced.
- Pounded loaf sugarLoaf sugar was refined sugar sold in a cone and broken up as needed; pounded, it is roughly the equivalent of caster or superfine sugar. Granulated is coarser and will dissolve more slowly in the whites.
- The icing ratio is thinFive ounces of sugar to four whites gives a slack mixture that may run before it dries. If it does, work in more sugar until it coats the cake thickly.
- Raw whitesThe icing may never reach a temperature that would pasteurise egg. For anyone feeding the very young, elderly or immune-compromised, use pasteurised whites or meringue powder.
- Slicing and reassemblingChill the cake first and cut with a long serrated knife; a warm sponge crumbles and the layers will not sit flush. Spread the jam thinly and keep it back from the edges, or it will bleed into the icing.
- Yield and costOne shilling and eightpence, in the currency of the 1870s and 80s. The stated four or five servings is modest for a whole cake; eight is more realistic by current portions.
By the time Cassell's was compiled, "charlotte" had drifted a long way from the fruit-filled, bread-lined pudding that carried the name in the eighteenth century. Careme's charlotte russe -- a mould lined with sponge fingers and filled with bavarois -- fixed the word to sponge-and-cream constructions, and thereafter Victorian cookery writers applied it to almost any dish built from cake in layers or as a casing. This Parisienne version keeps only that thread: a sponge, cut and rebuilt with jam and sealed under a dried meringue. It belongs to the frugal end of the confectioner's repertoire, a way of turning a Savoy or rice cake into something presentable for a small table, and the careful note of the probable cost is characteristic of a book written for households counting the shillings.