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Claret Puffs
Mix a pint of claret with the same quantity of thick cream. Add three table-spoonfuls of pounded sugar, or more if liked, and let the mixture stand some hours. Whisk it to a froth, and as it rises take it off and put it on a sieve. When it has drained, heap it on a glass dish, and pour some thick cream round the puffs to float them. Time to stand before whisking, twelve hours. Probable cost, 2s. 6d., exclusive of the claret. Sufficient for a goodsized dish.
This is a whipped syllabub under another name, and it behaves like one: the froth is skimmed off the surface as it forms rather than whipped in the bowl to stiffness.
- The hinge: skim, don't whip stiffWhisk with a large balloon whisk and lift the foam off the top with a skimmer or slotted spoon the moment it holds, then set it on the sieve to drain. If you keep beating the whole bowl the acid and alcohol will thin the cream and it will break into grains rather than climbing.
- UnitsAn imperial pint is 20 fl oz (570 ml), so this is a 1:1 mix of about 570 ml wine to 570 ml cream. Cutting the whole thing by half or a quarter is sensible for a modern table.
- Thick creamUse double cream, 48% fat, or heavy whipping cream at 36% and above. Lighter creams, and ultra-pasteurised cream in particular, are less reliable at holding air with this much liquid in the mix.
- Pounded sugarSugar crushed fine in a mortar; caster or superfine sugar is the direct equivalent. Three tablespoonfuls for a pint of wine is restrained, and the recipe itself allows 'more if liked'.
- ClaretA dry red Bordeaux, or any dry, moderately tannic red. Very oaky or high-alcohol reds make the froth taste harsh; the long standing time at least allows the sugar to dissolve fully into the wine and cream.
- Temperature and timingTwelve hours' standing should happen in the refrigerator, and everything, bowl and whisk included, wants to be thoroughly cold before you start. Warm cream simply will not throw a froth with this much liquid in it.
- DrainingSet the sieve over a bowl and let the puffs drain until they stop dripping. Note that the recipe pours fresh thick cream round the puffs at serving, not the wine-and-cream liquor that has drained through.
- Serving and yieldServe within an hour or two, since the froth slowly collapses back into liquid. The recipe quantifies the yield only as 'sufficient for a good-sized dish'.
- Cost note2s. 6d. is stated as exclusive of the claret, so the figure covers the cream and sugar alone.
Claret puffs belong to the long English family of syllabubs, in which cream is aerated with wine or cider and the resulting froth lifted off and drained. The "whipt syllabub" of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries worked the same way, often served in tall glasses so the guest ate the foam with a spoon and drank the wine-and-cream liquor beneath it; here the froth is heaped on a dish instead. Claret, meaning red Bordeaux, was a staple of the Victorian middle-class cellar after the wine-duty reductions of the early 1860s made it markedly cheaper in Britain, which is why a recipe can assume a whole pint of it is to hand.