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Charlotte Russe
Line a plain round mould with finger biscuits, carefully put them close together, and form a round or star at the bottom of the mould. Take a pint of cream and whisk it well with a little sugar and half an ounce of gelatine dissolved in a little water. Mix with it half a pint of apple, apricot, strawberry, or any other jam, and set it to freeze. Cover it with a piece of Savoy cake the shape of the mould, and be careful to fit it exactly, so that when it is turned out it will not be likely to break. Let it remain in the ice until it is sufficiently frozen. Turn out and serve. If fruit is not at hand the cream may be flavoured with coffee, burnt almond, vanilla, etc. Time to freeze, about an hour. Probable cost, 4s. Sufficient for a quart mould.
This is the frozen version of Charlotte Russe — closer to a bombe than the chilled custard charlotte most cooks know. The instructions assume an ice pail packed with ice and salt, which changes almost every timing.
- Finger biscuits and Savoy cakeFinger biscuits are ladyfingers (savoiardi); about 20-24 will line a quart mould. Savoy cake is a plain whisked sponge — a slice of shop-bought sponge or pound cake cut to the diameter of the mould does the same job as a lid.
- Imperial pintsCassell's pint is the imperial 20 fl oz, so a pint of cream is 2½ US cups and the half pint of jam is 1¼ cups. Use heavy or whipping cream; single cream will not hold air.
- Half an ounce of gelatineThat is about 14 g, or four to five teaspoons of modern powdered gelatine — roughly two envelopes, and considerably more setting power than a frozen dessert needs. Gelatine of this period varied a good deal in strength and refinement; 1 to 2 teaspoons bloomed in cold water and then warmed until clear is nearer the mark, and it should be cool but still liquid when it goes into the cream or it will set in threads.
- Freezing timeAn hour is realistic only in an ice-and-salt freezer, where the mould is surrounded by a brine well below 0°C. In a domestic freezer at −18°C a quart mould needs four to six hours, and overnight is safer.
- Whisk, then foldWhip the cream to soft peaks with the sugar before the gelatine and jam go in, and fold rather than whisk them through. Beaten-in jam deflates the cream and the result freezes hard instead of light.
- Jam sweetnessHalf a pint of jam is a lot of sugar, which is what keeps the mixture scoopable rather than icy. If you use a coffee or vanilla flavouring instead, add sugar — roughly 3 to 4 tablespoons per pint of cream — or the frozen cream will be unpleasantly firm.
- Turning outLine the mould with a strip of parchment or cling film before the biscuits go in, and dip the outside briefly in warm water before inverting. The sponge lid is structural: cut it to fit tightly or the whole thing collapses on the plate.
- Yield and costA quart mould serves eight to ten. The "probable cost, 4s." is four shillings — a substantial sum for a pudding in the late Victorian period when this dictionary was compiled.
The charlotte russe is generally traced to Antonin Carême, who is said to have renamed an earlier charlotte à la parisienne in honour of his Russian employer, Tsar Alexander I; the standard form is a mould lined with ladyfingers and filled with bavarian cream. What Cassell's gives here is the iced variant, which belonged to the same section of a Victorian kitchen's repertoire as bombes and iced puddings — dishes made possible by the mid-century trade in block ice and the hand-cranked freezing pail. The instruction to "set it to freeze" and then "let it remain in the ice" assumes a pail of crushed ice and coarse salt, the only domestic refrigeration available when this dictionary was compiled. The list of fallback flavourings — coffee, burnt almond, vanilla — is a reminder that fresh fruit was seasonal and jam was the year-round substitute.}