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Ice, Mock
Dissolve an ounce of gelatine in cupful of milk. Put with it one pint of fresh fruit (strawberries, raspberries, or red currants) which has been rubbed through a sieve, and add half a pint of cream and a little sugar. Put the cream into a mould till set. If liked, melted jam can be used instead of the fruit pulp.
A set cream dressed up as an ice, from the years before domestic freezing was practical. The technique is straightforward; the quantities need adjusting, because the gelatine of the 1890s was far weaker than what is sold now.
- Cut the gelatine hardAn ounce (28 g) of modern powdered or leaf gelatine will set roughly four pints to a firm jelly, and here the total liquid is only about two pints. Use 12-14 g (two sachets, or six leaves) for a cream that slices but still melts on the tongue.
- The measuresA cupful is generally taken as about half a pint, i.e. 10 fl oz British measure or a scant 1¼ US cups. The pint of fruit may be read as a pint of sieved pulp rather than of whole berries; on that reading, start with about 1½ lb of fruit.
- Dissolving it properlySprinkle the gelatine over the cold milk and let it swell for five minutes, then warm gently until completely clear. Do not boil it, and do not add it hot to the cream, or the fat will separate and you will get threads of set gelatine through the mixture.
- Temperature is the hingeBring the gelatine-milk and the fruit purée to the same lukewarm point, combine, then fold in the cream. Cold pulp meeting warm gelatine sets it instantly into strings that never disperse.
- Acid fruitRaspberries and red currants are acidic enough to slacken a gelatine set a little. Sweeten generously, which helps, and allow the mixture to stand at room temperature only briefly before it goes into the mould.
- Cream"Cream" here is most likely what we would call single or light cream, poured in liquid; the recipe does not say. Whipping it first gives a lighter, more mousse-like result, but a softer set.
- Moulding and turning outRinse the mould in cold water and leave it wet; nothing else is needed to release it. Chill at least four hours, six for a large mould, and dip briefly in warm water before inverting.
- The jam variationMelted jam is much sweeter and thicker than fresh pulp. Sieve out the seeds, slacken with a spoonful or two of water, and add no further sugar.
- YieldAbout six servings; the mixture comes to roughly two pints, so use a mould of that capacity. Serve with fresh berries or a thin pouring cream.
The name is the whole point: this is a cream shaped in a mould to look like a moulded ice, made for households that had no icehouse, no ice merchant nearby, and no patience for the labour of a hand-cranked freezer packed with ice and salt. Cassell's belongs to the period when commercially refined gelatine — sold in sheets, and later in packets — was increasingly replacing the calf's-foot stock that earlier cooks boiled down themselves, putting shaped, quivering creams within easier reach of a modest kitchen. Such dishes went by a small family of names: cream, bavarois, and the frankly declared "mock ice." The Victorian dinner table valued the silhouette of a dish as much as its flavour, and a turned-out mould in the colour of raspberries did the work of an ice at a fraction of the cost and trouble.