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RASPBERRY CREAM (another way) (Take some ripe raspberries)
Take some ripe raspberries, bruise, and sprinkle a little sugar over them, let them lie for half an hour, and rub them through a hair sieve. Measure the pulp, and mix with it an equal quantity of thick cream and sugar to sweeten it sufficiently. Whip it well with a whisk, and as the froth forms place it on an inverted sieve to drain. When no more can be obtained, slice three or four sponge biscuits, lay them in a glass dish, and spread a little raspberry jam over them. Pour over them the remainder of the cream and the drippings from the whip, and just before the cream is to be served pile the froth on the top. If fresh fruit cannot be had, dissolved raspberry jelly or raspberry jam mixed with a spoonful or two of water and rubbed through a sieve may be used in its place. Time, one hour to whip the cream.
A Victorian whipped fruit cream, built on the old syllabub trick of skimming the froth off as it forms and letting it drain. The method is sound; only the equipment and the fat content need attention.
- The hinge: drain the frothThe froth is lifted off with a skimmer as it rises and left on an upturned sieve so the thin liquid runs out; what remains is stiff enough to hold a pile. Skip this and you get a soft pink cream rather than the two-textured dessert the recipe intends.
- "Thick cream"Roughly what would now be sold as British double cream (48% butterfat minimum). US heavy or whipping cream at about 36% will whip but is much slacker once diluted with fruit pulp — use less pulp, or chill bowl, whisk and cream hard before starting.
- Equal quantities is a maximumRaspberry pulp is watery and acidic. Half a cup of pulp to a cup of cream whips far more reliably; the full one-to-one ratio works best with genuine double cream and very ripe, not juicy, fruit.
- One hour to whipThat is hand-whisking time in an era before electric beaters, and it includes the repeated skimming. With a mixer the cream itself is done in two to three minutes — stop at soft peaks, because over-whipped cream with fruit acid in it will curdle and weep.
- Hair sieveA fine horsehair mesh, the standard fine sieve of the period, and non-metal sieves were in any case preferred for acidic fruit. Any fine nylon or stainless sieve does the same job now; the point is removing the raspberry seeds.
- Sponge biscuitsSavoiardi or ladyfingers. Three or four of the modern kind line a small glass dish; they are meant to soak up the drippings, so do not toast or crisp them further.
- SugarNo quantity is specified (a sprinkle over the fruit, then enough to sweeten the cream). Start with two tablespoons per cup of pulp, taste, and remember the jam layer adds more sweetness.
- Yield and servingAbout four to six servings from a pint of cream. Assemble the base ahead and keep it cold, but pile the froth on only at the table — it slumps and weeps within the hour.
This is a syllabub method wearing a fruit-fool's clothes. Skimming whipped cream off as it forms and draining it on an inverted sieve was standard English practice from the seventeenth century onward, when the whisk was a bundle of birch twigs and an hour's labour was an honest estimate; the technique survived into late-Victorian books like Cassell's long after the older sack-and-cider syllabubs had gone out of fashion. What marks the recipe as its own period is the fallback clause: dissolved raspberry jelly or jam thinned with water and sieved, an acknowledgement that a middle-class household with a well-stocked store cupboard could now produce a summer dish in any month. The whipping and draining, not the flavouring, is the lesson.