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Ratafia Cream, Moulded
Rasp the rind of a lemon and a Seville orange, or of two lemons, with four or five good-sized lumps of sugar. Put these into a basin, strain the juice upon them, and stir and crush them till dissolved. Add a pint of thick cream, a quarter of a pint of ratafia, and a quarter of a pint of light wine, or, if preferred, a quarter of a pint of sherry, and the eighth of a pint of brandy, and mix all thoroughly. Dissolve an ounce of isinglass or gelatine in a cupful of milk, stir this into the cream, and whisk well. Cover the inside of an earthenware mould with muslin wrung out of cold water. Arrange upon this some ratafia biscuits which have been dipped in cream, pour the mixture in carefully, and let it stand in a cold place till set. Turn it out, and serve.
A late-Victorian moulded cream: an alcoholic, almond-scented set custard with no eggs and no cooking. The two things that decide whether it works are the gelatine quantity and the temperature at which you combine everything.
- The measures are imperialA pint is 20 fl oz (about 570 ml), a quarter of a pint 5 fl oz (150 ml), an eighth of a pint 2.5 fl oz (75 ml). Total liquid comes to over a litre once the cupful of milk is counted in.
- Gelatine strength has changedAn ounce of Victorian sheet isinglass or leaf gelatine is nothing like an ounce of modern powdered gelatine, which would give you a bouncing rubber dome. For this volume, 15-18 g of powder or eight to nine leaves gives a cream that stands but still spoons softly.
- Temperature is the hingeDissolve the gelatine in warmed milk, then let it cool to barely lukewarm before whisking it into the cold cream. Poured in hot it will either cook fine threads into the mixture or set in strings the moment it hits the cold cream.
- Add the acid slowlyCitrus juice plus 225-300 ml of spirit and wine against a pint of cream is close to the point where the cream splits. Stir the juice mixture into the cream in a thin stream while whisking, and keep everything cold.
- Rasping the sugarRubbing lump sugar over the zest until it is coloured and oily is the old way of making what is now called an oleo-saccharum. A microplane and caster sugar do the same job; you want the oil, not shreds of peel.
- Seville oranges and light wineSevilles are bitter marmalade oranges, in the shops only in midwinter; two lemons, as the recipe allows, is the year-round answer. "Light wine" is set against sherry in the recipe, so it most likely means an unfortified table white rather than a fortified one; a sweeter, less acidic wine suits the dish.
- Ratafia, the drink and the biscuitRatafia here is the almond- or kernel-flavoured liqueur, for which amaretto is the obvious modern stand-in. Ratafia biscuits are small, hard almond macaroons the size of a marble; amaretti serve, broken up if they are the large kind.
- Thick creamRead this as double cream, around 48 per cent fat. Whisk only to combine and aerate lightly; whipped to peaks it will hold air pockets that spoil the turned-out surface.
- Setting and servingThe wet muslin lining is purely to help release the mould, and it still works. Allow six hours in the refrigerator, or overnight; it serves eight, and being uncooked and strongly alcoholic it is an adults-only dessert.
Ratafia was the general Georgian and Victorian name for a sweetened cordial flavoured with fruit kernels, peach or cherry stones or bitter almonds, and the word is traditionally traced to the Latin tag rata fiat, a drink taken to seal or ratify a bargain, though that derivation is folk etymology as often as it is fact. By the nineteenth century the term had drifted to mean almond flavour generally, which is why the same page can call for both a glass of ratafia and a handful of ratafia biscuits, the little almond macaroons still sold under that name in Britain. Moulded creams of this sort, set with isinglass drawn from sturgeon bladders before commercial gelatine displaced it, seem to have been a familiar cold sweet of a Victorian dinner table: no oven, no eggs, a great deal of cream and spirit, and a shape that depended entirely on the cook's judgement of her setting agent.