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Currant Cream, Red
Express a pint of red currant juice. In order to do this pick the currants and put them into an earthen jar. Cover it closely and put it into a large pan of cold water, which must be so full that it will reach to the top of the jar. Let it simmer for two hours. Drain the juice from the currants, mix a pint of it with a pint of thick cream, add an ounce and a half of melted gelatine and some sugar. Pour the mixture into a mould, and set it in a cool place to stiffen.
A Victorian moulded cream, set with gelatine rather than eggs. Two things decide whether it works: the strength of the gelatine and keeping the acid juice from splitting the cream.
- Gelatine, the critical adjustmentAn ounce and a half is a heavy dose by modern standards; Victorian gelatine was less standardised and generally weaker than modern powder, and the original was probably aiming at a firm, sliceable set. Roughly 1/2 oz (about 4 teaspoons, or two envelopes) will set 4 cups of liquid to a tender set that will still turn out. Bloom it in a few tablespoons of cold water, then dissolve over gentle heat without boiling.
- Don't curdle the creamRedcurrant juice is sharply acidic and can curdle thick cream if the cream is cold and the juice is warm, or if it goes in too fast. Have both at room temperature, dissolve the sugar in the juice first, then pour the juice into the cream in a thin stream while stirring.
- "Thick cream"Heavy or double cream, 36 percent butterfat or higher. Do not whip it; it goes into the mould as liquid.
- Extracting the juiceThe jar-in-a-pan method is a water bath, and it is worth keeping: it draws juice without scorching and without diluting. Any lidded heatproof jar in a deep pan of barely simmering water works, 1.5 to 2 hours. A pint of juice needs roughly 2 to 2.5 lb of currants. Strain through a jelly bag or fine sieve and do not press hard, or the cream will be cloudy.
- SugarThe original gives no quantity. Redcurrants are very tart; start at 5 to 6 oz (about 3/4 cup) per pint of juice and taste before adding the cream, remembering that the set mixture will read less sweet cold than warm.
- Setting time and mould"A cool place" would have been a larder or cellar; a refrigerator does the same job: 6 hours minimum, overnight for a clean turn-out. Use a mould of about 1 quart, rinsed with cold water rather than oiled. To unmould, dip briefly in hot water and invert.
- YieldAbout 4 cups of mixture, serving 8. It is rich, and a small portion with fresh berries is enough.
- CurrantsRedcurrants are scarce in American markets and were banned in parts of the country for much of the twentieth century as a host of white pine blister rust. Frozen currants give the same juice and can go straight into the jar.
Moulded creams of this kind sit at the point where the dairy dessert met commercial gelatine. Earlier English "creams" were thickened with eggs, isinglass or calf's-foot jelly, all of which meant more work and a less certain set; by the later nineteenth century refined leaf gelatine could be bought by the ounce. Redcurrants were a standard English garden fruit, grown for jelly and for summer puddings, and their sharp acidity made them a natural choice against all that dairy fat.