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Cream, Italian
Dissolve one ounce of gelatine in a spoonful of milk. Make a custard with half a pint of milk, the yolks of three eggs, and a little sugar. Stir in a few drops of vanilla, and a spoonful of brandy for flavouring. When cool, add the dissolved gelatine, and half a pint of cream which has been whisked till it thickens. Put it into a well-oiled mould, and set it on ice, or, if preferred, serve in glasses. Double cream, or cream that has stood twenty-four hours, should be used for making creams. Probable cost, 2s. Sufficient for a large mould.
A Victorian moulded cream in the bavarois family: cooked custard, gelatine and whipped cream. Two things need adjusting before it will work as intended — the amount of gelatine and the way it is hydrated.
- Gelatine: use far lessOne ounce of modern powdered gelatine would set roughly two quarts; here it is being asked to set about a pint of liquid and would give a bouncing, rubbery result. Victorian sheet gelatine was inconsistent and often much weaker. For a pint of custard and cream, 2 to 2½ teaspoons of powdered gelatine (about ¼ oz, one sachet) or four platinum-grade sheets is enough for a mould that will stand unsupported.
- "Dissolve in a spoonful of milk"Gelatine will not dissolve in a cold spoonful of milk; it swells. Sprinkle it over 2 to 3 tablespoons of cold milk, leave 5 minutes to bloom, then warm gently until clear, or stir it into the hot custard off the heat.
- Imperial measuresHalf a pint imperial is 10 fl oz (about 285 ml), not the American 8. A "spoonful" in a book of this period is generally taken to mean a tablespoon, though the convention is nowhere stated here.
- The custardThree yolks to 10 fl oz milk is a thin pouring custard. Cook it over low heat or a bain-marie to 180°F/82°C, stirring, until it coats the spoon; past that the yolks scramble and no amount of straining recovers the texture.
- Order of operationsAdd the gelatine while the custard is warm enough to keep it fluid, then cool the mixture to the point where it just begins to thicken before folding in the whipped cream. Fold too early and the cream melts into a foam that separates; too late and it sets in streaks.
- Double creamBritish double cream is around 48% fat. American heavy cream (36%) works but whips softer, and whipping cream at 30-36% softer still. "Cream that has stood twenty-four hours" refers to cream risen off unhomogenised milk ehbehind it is to use the richest cream available.
- SettingAn oiled mould means brushed with a flavourless oil, very lightly. Refrigerate 4 to 6 hours rather than setting on ice; unmould by dipping the base briefly in warm water.
- YieldThe mixture is about a pint of liquid before the cream is whipped, so a mould of a quart or a little under. Serves about six, or fills six glasses if you skip the mould.
Nineteenth-century English cookery books used "cream" to mean a moulded, gelatine-set custard rather than the dairy product, and distinguished them by flavour or supposed origin — Italian, Dutch, Swiss, Venetian — with the labels often carrying no reliable geographical meaning. The dish is essentially the French bavarois, and its spread through domestic manuals like Cassell's tracks the arrival of cheap commercial gelatine in the second half of the century: earlier cooks had to clarify isinglass from fish swim bladders or boil down calves' feet, laborious work that many households nonetheless undertook. Once packeted gelatine could be bought by the ounce, an elaborate turned-out cream became something a household cook could attempt with far less trouble. Recipes like this one appear with a costing attached — two shillings was a real consideration for the readers these books addressed.