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Flemish Cream
Pour a pint of hot water on half an ounce of the best isinglass. When it has dissolved, mix it with a quarter of a pint of cream and a glass of brandy, and whisk it into a light froth. Colour with currant jelly. Put it into a mould. Probable cost, 1s. 3d., exclusive of brandy.
A Victorian moulded cream that depends entirely on the setting agent and on catching the mixture at the right moment. The written method is thin, so the points below fill in what the original assumes a cook already knows.
- The hinge: whisk as it thickensWhisking a warm, fully liquid mixture achieves nothing — the froth collapses before it sets. Let the isinglass and cream mixture cool until it is syrupy and just beginning to hold a trail, then whisk hard and mould at once.
- IsinglassDried sturgeon swim bladder, sold in leaf or shred form and once the standard clear setting agent. Half an ounce is about 14 g, but its strength varied enormously between grades, which is why the recipe specifies "the best". Modern leaf or powdered gelatine is the direct replacement; use the quantity on the packet for a pint of liquid rather than matching the weight, since strengths are not comparable.
- Quarter of a pint of creamAn imperial quarter-pint is 5 fl oz, or about 140 ml — one gill. Single or whipping cream both work; the mixture is mostly water, so the result is light rather than rich.
- A glass of brandyIn Victorian usage a wine glass, roughly 2 fl oz (60 ml). It is enough alcohol to soften the set slightly, so do not increase it.
- SweeteningNo sugar is listed. The currant jelly is doing the work, and a couple of tablespoons of it gives colour but little sweetness. Taste before moulding and add caster sugar dissolved into the warm liquid if it needs it.
- The mouldRinse the mould with cold water rather than oiling it — oil clouds a clear jelly cream. To turn out, dip briefly in hot water to the rim, then invert onto a wetted plate so the cream can be slid into position.
- Setting time and yieldAbout a pint and a half of mixture, serving four to six. Allow at least four hours in the refrigerator, or overnight for a fluted mould with fine detail.
- The cost note1s 3d is one shilling and threepence in pre-decimal money, quoted because Cassell's costed nearly every recipe for household budgeting. Brandy was excluded because its price varied so widely.
Isinglass is the thread running through this recipe: a gelatine extracted from fish swim bladders, chiefly sturgeon, imported into Britain largely from Russia, and for much of the nineteenth century among the finest setting agents a cook could buy for clear jellies and moulded creams. It was expensive enough that the book specifies "the best" grade, and it was gradually displaced by commercial sheet and powdered gelatine, which was cheaper and of more reliable strength. Dishes named for a country or city — Flemish, Bavarian, Venetian creams — were a common convention in Victorian cookery books and rarely indicate much about actual origin; the name generally signals a style of moulded cream rather than a documented Flemish dish. What distinguishes this one is how little cream it contains relative to water, a frugal version of a luxury form, which fits its place in a book that priced its recipes to the penny for middle-class households working to a budget.