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Pink Cream
Take a pint and a half of ripe red currants, strip them from the stalks, and put them into an earthen jar with a closely-fitting lid. Set this in a pan of boiling water, and boil gently until the juice flows freely. Strain the juice through a fine sieve, and sweeten to taste with powdered white sugar. Stir into half a pint of juice a pint of cream, and beat the mixture until it begins to thicken. Serve in a glass dish. If liked, the juice of a lemon may be added to the cream. Time to boil the currants, two hours. Probable cost, 2s. 2d. Sufficient for five or six persons.
A cold fruit cream of the fool family, dependent on the acid in the currant juice as much as on beating to set it. Two things need attention: the cream must be one that will whip, and the currants do not need anything like two hours.
- The hinge: acid plus creamRedcurrant juice is sharply acidic, and whisked into cream it thickens fast and can tip into a grainy, curdled mass. Add the juice cold, in a thin stream, and stop beating the moment the mixture holds a soft ribbon.
- Cream to useVictorian cream was unstandardised but rich. Use double cream, or US heavy cream at 36% fat or above; single or whipping cream at 30% will not carry this much juice without going soupy.
- Imperial measuresA British pint is 20 fl oz, so a pint and a half of currants is roughly 850 ml by volume, somewhere around 1 lb 2 oz to 1 lb 4 oz of fruit depending on how it packs. Half a pint of juice is 10 fl oz (about 285 ml) and a pint of cream 20 fl oz (about 570 ml).
- "Powdered white sugar"In Cassell's this means finely milled sugar, the equivalent of modern caster or superfine sugar, not confectioners' sugar with its cornstarch. Dissolve it in the warm juice rather than the cold cream.
- Two hours is far too longThe jar-in-a-pan of water is a bain-marie, used to draw juice without scorching. Ripe redcurrants burst and run in 20 to 30 minutes over gentle heat; two hours only dulls the colour and the fresh flavour that makes the dish pink.
- StrainingPass the fruit through a fine sieve or a jelly bag but do not press hard on the pulp, or the cream will be cloudy and slightly bitter from the skins and seeds.
- The lemonOptional and easily overdone here, since the currants already supply plenty of acid. A teaspoon or two of juice sharpens the flavour; a whole lemon on top of the currants risks breaking the cream.
- Serving and yieldServes five or six as written. Chill for an hour before serving in a glass dish, and eat the same day; the mixture weeps if it stands overnight.
- The cost noteTwo shillings and twopence was a late-nineteenth-century household estimate, and much of it will have been the pint of cream rather than the fruit. It carries no useful conversion today.
Fruit creams and fools of this kind were a fixture of English summer tables long before Cassell's collected them, and they run on one simple piece of chemistry: acidic fruit juice will thicken cream without any cooking, gelatine or eggs. Redcurrants, ripening in July, were a kitchen-garden staple in Britain and rarely a market luxury, which is why so many Victorian books give them jellies, ices, creams and shrub. The instruction to set the fruit in a closed jar inside a pan of boiling water is the standard nineteenth-century method for extracting juice cleanly, the same technique used for redcurrant jelly, and it survived because a direct flame under a thin pan of fruit scorches sugar and spoils colour. The costing in shillings and pence, and the note on how many the dish will serve, are house style throughout Cassell's New Dictionary of Cookery, aimed at a mistress or cook budgeting a dinner rather than at a casual reader.