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Raspberry Fool
Put a pint of raspberries into a saucepan with a quarter of a pound of loaf sugar, and let them stew till tender. Rub them through a sieve with the back of a wooden spoon, and mix with the pulp as much cream or milk as will make it of the consistency of custard. Serve cold. When cream is not to be had, and it is desired that the preparation should be richer than it would be if cream only were used, the yolks of two eggs may be added to three-quarters of a pint of milk, and stirred over the fire until it begins to thicken without boiling. Time, ten minutes to stew the raspberries. Probable cost, 2s. if made with cream. Sufficient for six persons.
A very plain fruit fool: stewed raspberry pulp loosened with cream, or with a thin egg custard when cream is scarce. Two points decide whether it works — sieving out every seed, and keeping the custard below a simmer.
- A pint of raspberriesThis is an imperial pint measured by volume, roughly 12 oz / 340 g of berries — about two standard American 6 oz punnets. Frozen raspberries stew perfectly well and give up their juice faster.
- Loaf sugarRefined white sugar, sold in the nineteenth century as a hard cone to be broken up with sugar nippers. A quarter pound is 4 oz / 115 g, a little over half a cup of granulated sugar. Raspberries vary; taste the pulp before you add all of it.
- Sieving is the whole textureRaspberry seeds are gritty and will not soften with cooking. Push the fruit through a fine sieve with the back of a wooden spoon or a ladle, scraping the underside as you go; some pulp will inevitably be left behind with the seeds. A food mill with the fine plate does the same job faster; a blender does not, as it only breaks the seeds up.
- The custard must not boilTwo yolks stirred into three-quarters of a pint of milk thicken at about 175-180F. Once it reaches a simmer the eggs curdle and no amount of beating recovers it. Stir constantly over low heat until the mixture coats the back of a spoon, then take it straight off and cool it before combining with the fruit.
- Cream or milkVictorian cream was not standardised. The recipe gives no quantity for the cream: add heavy or double cream until the fool has the body of a pouring custard, with the three-quarters of a pint (15 fl oz / 425 ml) named for the milk version as a rough guide. This is a soft, spoonable fool rather than the stiff whipped-cream version common today; whip the cream lightly first if you prefer it to hold its shape.
- Serve coldChill for at least two hours. The flavour is flat when the fool is barely cool, and the mixture thickens noticeably in the refrigerator.
- YieldSix small glasses in the Victorian manner, or four modern servings. It keeps two days covered in the refrigerator; the egg-custard version will not keep longer.
A fool is one of the oldest surviving English sweet dishes, though its name is of uncertain origin: a derivation from the French fouler, to crush or press, is often repeated but doubted by lexicographers, and the association with the ordinary English sense of a trifling thing is at least as old. Recipes for gooseberry fool appear from the seventeenth century onward, and the form barely changed: cooked fruit pulp let down with cream or a thin custard, and nothing else. Cassell's places the recipe among its plain everyday sweets and gives two versions, one for households with a dairy and one for those without: cream was a luxury dependent on proximity to a cow, while eggs and milk could be had almost anywhere. The costing at 2s. is for the cream version, eggs being offered only where cream cannot be had.