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CREAM, VANILLA (another way)
Simmer half a stick of vanilla in a pint of milk for twenty minutes, or until the flavour is thoroughly extracted, take out the vanilla, and pour the boiling milk upon one ounce of isinglass, and stir it until the latter is quite dissolved. Now mix the yolks of six eggs with the milk, put it in a saucepan, and stir it constantly over the fire till it thickens, but it must not boil. Strain it into a large basin, and add to it half a pint of well-whipped cream, and a small glass of brandy. Pour it into a well-oiled mould, and set it on ice. To turn it out, dip the mould for a moment into warm water. If it cannot be set on ice, a little more isinglass may be added. Time, three-quarters of an hour to prepare. Probable cost, 2s. 7d., exclusive of the brandy. Sufficient for one quart mould.
A Victorian vanilla Bavarian cream, set with isinglass rather than leaf gelatine. Two things need attention before you start: the setting agent, and the fact that the recipe as printed contains no sugar.
- Isinglass to gelatineIsinglass is dried fish swim bladder, chiefly sturgeon, and its setting strength varied enormously between grades, so no conversion is exact. For a quart mould of this richness, a workable modern equivalent is about 1/2 oz (14 g) of powdered gelatine or six sheets of leaf, bloomed in cold water first; err on the soft side and chill longer rather than adding more.
- The missing sugarThe instructions never sweeten the custard, which is either an omission or an assumption that the reader knows better. Three to four ounces (about 1/2 cup) of caster sugar beaten into the yolks brings it into line with comparable creams of the period.
- The hinge: do not boilOnce the yolks go in, the mixture must thicken without simmering. Take it to 180F/82C on a thermometer, or until it coats the back of a spoon and a drawn finger leaves a clean track. A few seconds past that and you have sweet scrambled egg, which is why the recipe insists on straining.
- Half a stick of vanillaA Victorian vanilla "stick" is a whole pod. Split half a pod lengthwise and scrape the seeds into the milk along with the husk; twenty minutes at a bare simmer, covered, extracts plenty.
- A small glass of brandySomewhere between 1 and 2 fl oz (2 to 4 tablespoons). Much more than that and the alcohol will slacken the set noticeably.
- Oiling the mouldUse a flavourless oil, applied thinly with a brush or paper and wiped almost dry. Any pooled oil shows as greasy patches on the turned-out cream.
- Setting and unmoulding"Set it on ice" means a bowl of ice and water in the days before refrigeration; four hours in the refrigerator does the same work. The warm-water dip should be three to five seconds only.
- YieldOne quart mould, which will give six to eight small portions given how rich the custard base is.
Isinglass, made from the dried swim bladders of sturgeon and imported chiefly through Russia and later Brazil, was the standard setting agent in English kitchens long before commercial powdered gelatine became cheap and reliable in the later nineteenth century. It was expensive, and it was also used to fine wine and beer, a job it still does. A cream like this one, a custard lightened with whipped cream and set stiff enough to stand up out of a mould, is what French cookery calls a bavarois and what English books of the period usually filed simply under "creams" alongside a dozen flavour variants. The instruction to add more isinglass if there is no ice is a plain reminder that a moulded cream was a warm-room gamble.