Home › The Principles of Cookery › Froth, to Set on Creams, Custard, Etc
Froth, to Set on Creams, Custard, Etc
Beat the whites of four or five eggs to a froth; stew damsons, or any other fruit, until they can be pulped through a sieve, then beat the pulp with the frothed eggs until the fork will stand upright in it. Put it with a spoon on the top of trifle, cream, or custard; it should look rocky, so put it on as roughly as possible. Time, beat until the whole is a stiff froth.
A Victorian "rocky" snow for spooning over trifle, and a reminder of how freely nineteenth-century kitchens served uncooked egg. The froth is never heated at any stage, and it is not a filling that will be baked afterwards.
- Why the cautionFour or five raw egg whites are beaten with cold fruit pulp and served as-is on cold cream, custard or trifle. Shell eggs can carry Salmonella, and nothing in this method brings the whites anywhere near a temperature that would reduce it. The dish is then held at room temperature on a dessert, which is the wrong direction entirely.
- Who is most at riskRaw egg is least advisable for children, elderly people, pregnant women and anyone immunocompromised. If you want a fruit snow of this kind, use a current recipe built on pasteurised whites or a cooked meringue.
- DamsonsSmall, tart, dusky-purple plums with a clinging stone, in season late summer into autumn and still sold at markets and pick-your-own farms in Britain. Their acidity and colour hold up well to stewing; ordinary dessert plums give a paler, sweeter, slacker pulp.
- "Pulped through a sieve"This means a fine hair or wire sieve worked with a wooden spoon, producing a thick purée free of skins and stones — the equivalent of a food mill on its finest plate. A blender will not do the same job, since it liquidises the skins back in and thins the pulp.
- Reading the doneness cue"Until the fork will stand upright in it" is the period's stiff-peak test, and it is a demanding one: the mixture must hold a fork bolt upright without leaning. Fruit purée carries acid, sugar and water that all fight the foam, which is why the whites are beaten first and the pulp added to them.
- "Rocky"The look being aimed at is a heaped, jagged snowdrift, spooned on in irregular lumps rather than smoothed, exactly as the recipe directs. Period dessert names such as rock cream and apple snow trade on the same deliberately rough finish.
- YieldFour to five whites with fruit pulp makes a generous quantity of topping, though the recipe specifies no yield or serving number. An uncooked foam of this kind is best eaten the day it is made; it weeps and collapses on standing.
Fruit snows and "rock creams" run through English cookery, and it is often said that they exist because egg whites were a by-product: rich creams, custards and pastry glazes used yolks by the dozen, leaving whites that a careful kitchen would not throw away. Whipping them with a sieved fruit pulp turned a leftover into a showpiece that gave height and colour to the top of a trifle at no extra cost. The recipe is best read as a technique to be applied to whatever fruit is at hand — damsons are named only as the exemplar, the instruction extending to "any other fruit". The instruction to make it look "rocky" suggests a taste for craggy, picturesque desserts; the smooth swirled meringue we now default to is a later habit.