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Gateau, Napolitaine
Cut a large round spongecake into slices nearly an inch thick. Spread a little good jam on each slice, and replace it in its original position, allowing it to soak in a little noyeau or maraschino before another slice is placed upon it. The topmost piece of cake should have jam on the under side. Sweeten a breakfast-cupful of thick cream, and flavour it according to taste. Pour this round the cake, which should be ornamented with sugar-icing, coloured with cochineal. Time, one hour to prepare. Probable cost, exclusive of the noyeau or maraschino, 2s. 6d. Sufficient for a moderate-sized dish.
An assembly job rather than a baked one: a bought or leftover sponge is sliced, filled, re-stacked and moated with cream. The only real technique is restraint with the liqueur.
- Breakfast-cupfulA Victorian breakfast cup holds roughly half a pint, so about 1 to 1¼ cups of cream. Double or heavy cream is what "thick cream" means here; sweeten to taste and either pour it unwhipped or beat it only to a loose ribbon so it still flows around the base.
- Noyeau and maraschinoNoyeau (usually spelled noyau) is an almond-scented liqueur made from fruit kernels, sold today as crème de noyaux; maraschino is the liqueur distilled from marasca cherries, stones and all — not the sweet syrup from a jar of cocktail cherries. Either works, and a plain kirsch or amontillado is a reasonable substitute.
- How much liqueurThe original gives no quantity, and this is where the dish is won or lost. Brush a tablespoon or so over each cut face, let it soak a minute, then add the next slice; a soaked-through sponge will collapse when the cream goes round it.
- Jam"Good jam" means one stiff enough to hold a layer — apricot, raspberry or damson. Warm it slightly to spread, but let it cool before stacking or it will thin and run down the sides.
- CochinealCochineal is carmine, the red made from scale insects, still sold as a food colour and listed as carmine or E120. It is not vegetarian; beet powder or any modern red will give the same effect.
- Sugar-icingVictorian 'sugar-icing' could mean either a glacé icing (icing sugar slackened with a little water or lemon juice) or a royal icing beaten with egg white; for a cake that is never baked again, a glacé icing of thick pouring consistency, tinted pink, is the simpler reading. Let it set before the cream is added to the dish.
- Yield and timing'One hour to prepare' presumably covers the soaking and the setting of the icing as much as any active work. The recipe gives no number of servings, only 'sufficient for a moderate-sized dish'; a large round sponge cut into four or five slices will go round several people. Assemble a few hours ahead and keep it cold, but add the cream just before it goes to the table.
Cassell's belongs to the late-Victorian period when a "gateau" in an English household was often a made-up dish rather than a baked one — sponge, jam, liqueur and cream arranged for the table, close kin to the trifle and to the charlotte russe then fashionable in dinner-party service. Names of this kind were applied loosely; "Napolitaine" in nineteenth-century English cookery usually signals layers, striped or stacked, rather than any Neapolitan original, and the same word attaches to layered ices and to the layered wafers still sold as Neapolitan. The pink icing is a period marker: cochineal was the common red of the Victorian confectioner's shelf. The "probable cost" in shillings and pence, given for most entries in the book, was aimed at a housekeeper working to a weekly figure, and the liqueur here is priced separately from the 2s. 6d.