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RASPBERRY CREAM (another way) (Bruise the fruit)
Bruise the fruit as in the last recipe, sprinkle sugar over it, and in half an hour drain off the juice. Measure it, and take the same quantity of thick cream; sweeten and flavour this, and whip it briskly with white of egg (see WHIPPED CREAM). As the whip forms lay it on a sieve to drain. When a sufficient quantity is obtained, beat the yolks of the eggs, mix them with the cream which drains from the whip, and stir the mixture over the fire till it thickens like custard. Let it get cold, mix the raspberry juice with it, lay it in a glass dish, and pile the whip on the top. If fresh fruit cannot be had, this cream may be made, like the others, from preserved jelly or jam. The cream should be whipped till all is used.
Cassell's gives no quantities here because the recipe is proportional: the volume of drained raspberry juice sets the volume of cream. Read it as a method rather than a formula.
- Working out the amountsFor a dish serving six, start with about 1 lb (450 g) raspberries; whatever juice they yield after macerating is matched by an equal quantity of thick cream, as the recipe directs, and all of that cream is whipped. The number of eggs is never stated; two whites for the whip and their two yolks for the custard is one sensible reading.
- "Thick cream"Victorian thick cream is generally taken to have been richer than most cartons sold today. Use heavy or double cream (36 per cent butterfat or above), well chilled, or the whip may not hold on the sieve.
- The draining whipWhipping cream with egg white and letting the froth drain on a sieve is a pre-stabiliser technique: the loose liquid falls through and the stiff foam is skimmed off as it forms. That drained liquid is what goes into the custard, so keep a bowl underneath.
- Raw white in the toppingThe piled whip is never cooked. If you are serving anyone elderly, pregnant, very young or immune-compromised, use pasteurised egg white; otherwise pile it on no more than an hour before serving, as it slackens.
- The custard is the hingeStir the yolks and cream over gentle heat, ideally in a bowl over simmering water, until it coats a spoon at about 175-180F (80C). Anything approaching a boil will scramble it, and there is no flour here to protect you.
- Add the juice coldCassell's is specific that the custard must be cold before the raspberry juice goes in. Acid stirred into hot yolks will thin and curdle the mixture; cooled, it simply tints and flavours it.
- Maceration, not just sweeteningThe sugar sprinkled over the bruised fruit draws out juice by osmosis. Cassell's allows half an hour; longer standing will give more juice. Press the fruit through a sieve if you want it seedless.
- The jam versionIf using preserved jelly or jam, let it down with a little water to a pourable juice and cut the sugar in the custard and the whip accordingly, or the finished cream will be cloying.
- ServingA glass dish is not decoration for its own sake: the raspberry-tinted custard below and the white whip on top were meant to be seen in layers. Chill and serve the same day.
Cassell's places this among a run of fruit creams, the English family of dishes that runs from the fool, recorded from the sixteenth century, through to the trifle: fruit, cream, sugar, and sometimes eggs, assembled cold. The word "whip" here is a noun, the stiff froth skimmed from whipped cream and drained on a sieve, a standard confectioner's preparation of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries that gave volume without gelatine or modern stabilisers. Raspberries suited it well: they bruise and give up juice readily under nothing more than sugar, and their acidity cuts the richness of a yolk custard. The closing note that the cream may be made from preserved jelly or jam is the practical heart of the entry for a Victorian household, where raspberries were a matter of a few summer weeks and the store cupboard had to answer for the rest of the year.