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Cream, Neapolitan
Make a rich custard with one pint of cream, one pint of milk, one and a half ounces of gelatine, four ounces of loaf sugar, and the yolks of eight eggs; flavour with vanilla; divide it into three portions. Colour the first red with carmine, the second green with spinach-juice, and leave the third its original colour; whip each separately to a froth. While the custard is still warm, pour about one inch of the red cream into a mould; let it set, then pour in a little of the plain cream; and when this is set, pour in a layer of the green. Go on pouring in layers in the same way until the mould is filled. When the cream is quite cold turn it out carefully; sprinkle over it a few chopped almonds, and serve. Probable cost. 2s.
A layered set custard in three colours, built up in a mould one stratum at a time. The whole thing turns on temperature control, both in the custard and in the pouring.
- The hinge: work warm, pour thinEach layer must be cool enough to hold its shape but the mixture in the bowl must stay warm and fluid, or it sets solid before the mould is filled. Keep the three bowls in a warm water bath and give each poured layer only the few minutes it needs to firm at the surface; if a layer goes fully cold and rubbery the next one will not bond to it and the turned-out cream will split along the seams.
- Gelatine strengthOne and a half ounces to two pints of liquid is heavy by modern standards. Victorian gelatine varied in strength and could be weaker than today's 200-bloom leaf or powder; with current gelatine, around 1/2 to 3/4 oz (14-21 g) gives a cream that unmoulds cleanly without being bouncy.
- Custard temperatureEight yolks in a pint each of cream and milk wants gentle heat only. Cook to about 175-180F, until it coats the back of a spoon, then take it off. Boiling scrambles it, and the gelatine should be dissolved into the hot custard off the heat rather than boiled with it.
- Loaf sugarCone or loaf sugar was refined white sugar sold in a solid block and broken or crushed for use. Ordinary granulated sugar is the direct replacement, four ounces by weight.
- CarmineCarmine is cochineal, a red pigment derived from scale insects, sold in Victorian kitchens as a liquid or as a powder to be dissolved. It is still available as carmine or E120, though a modern red food colour is the easier substitute; a beetroot or raspberry reduction also works but will thin the custard slightly.
- Spinach-juice greenThe period method is to pound raw spinach, press out the juice, and heat it gently until the green solids coagulate and can be strained off as a paste. It gives a soft grey-green rather than a bright one, and carries a faint vegetal note that vanilla mostly covers.
- Whipping"Whip each separately to a froth" means aerating the custard as it begins to thicken, which lightens the set considerably. Whip only to soft, foamy peaks and use it at once; over-whipped gelatine custard breaks into a grainy mass.
- Mould and turning outA plain charlotte mould or loaf tin of about 2 quarts suits the quantity. Dip briefly in hand-hot water to release, and leave the cream until it is quite cold and fully set before unmoulding.
- Yield and costTwo pints of custard plus air serves ten to twelve. The 2s. is a late-Victorian retail estimate for the ingredients and has no useful modern equivalent.
Neapolitan cream belongs to the same nineteenth-century fashion as Neapolitan ice, the striped brick of frozen cream that Italian confectioners popularised in Britain and America; the tricolour arrangement is often connected to the Italian flag, though the association is traditional rather than documented, and the name attached itself loosely to almost any layered sweet in three colours. Cassell's includes it among the moulded creams that were the backbone of a Victorian dessert course, dishes that depended on gelatine becoming cheap and reliable enough for domestic use in the middle of the century. Before that, cooks had to dissolve and clarify bought isinglass, or else boil down calves'-foot jelly, an all-day business; packaged sheet gelatine turned the elaborate moulded cream from a confectioner's showpiece into something a competent household cook could attempt, and books of this period are full of the results.