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Strawberry Cream
Pick the stalks from a pint of strawberries, sprinkle a tea-cupful of powdered sugar over them, bruise them well with a wooden spoon, and rub them through a fine hair sieve till all the juice has been taken from them. Dissolve an ounce and a half of isinglass or gelatine in three-quarters of a pint of new milk, add a pint of thick cream and the strawberry-juice. The cream should be whipped with a whisk before being used (see CREAM, WHIPPED). Pour the mixture into a damp mould and set it in a cool place till stiff. A few drops of prepared cochineal may be added to improve the colour. If liked, the juice may be drawn from the fruit over the fire or in the oven. When fresh fruit cannot be obtained, half a pint of strawberry jam dissolved in two table-spoonfuls of water and strained may be used instead. Time, five minutes to simmer the cream.
A moulded cream in the Victorian manner, set with isinglass and lightened with whipped cream. Two things decide whether it succeeds: the temperature at which the gelatine milk meets the whipped cream, and how much gelatine you actually use.
- The hinge: temperature when you combineLet the dissolved gelatine and milk cool to barely warm — around body temperature — before folding it into the whipped cream and juice. Poured in hot it will deflate the cream and give you a dense jelly; left to cool too far it sets in threads and the mixture goes lumpy.
- Isinglass and gelatine strengthIsinglass is dried sturgeon swim bladder, once the standard setting agent and now rarely seen in kitchens, though it is still sold for brewing. Modern powdered or leaf gelatine is generally stronger than the Victorian article: an ounce and a half to roughly a pint and three-quarters of liquid would give a rubbery, cuttable block rather than a spoonable cream. About half that quantity is likely to suit current gelatine.
- Imperial measuresCassell's pints are imperial, 20 fl oz or 568 ml, not the 16 oz American pint. A teacupful of powdered sugar is roughly 5 to 6 oz — call it three-quarters of a cup of caster sugar, and taste, since strawberry sweetness varies enormously.
- New milk"New milk" means fresh whole milk straight from the dairy, unskimmed and not soured. Ordinary whole milk is the equivalent; the recipe's richness comes from the pint of cream anyway.
- "Thick cream"Double or heavy cream. Whip it only to soft peaks — it stiffens further as the gelatine sets, and over-whipped cream folds in as grains.
- The hair sieveA fine nylon or stainless sieve does the same work. Press the crushed berries hard with the back of a ladle and scrape the underside; a pint of strawberries yields surprisingly little juice, and the pulp left behind is where the flavour is.
- CochinealStill sold as carmine or E120, and still made from scale insects, so it is not vegetarian. Strawberry juice fades to a dull pink once diluted with a pint of cream, which is why the colouring is suggested; it is optional.
- Moulding and turning outRinse the mould in cold water and leave it wet — the film of water is what releases the cream. Chill four hours or overnight, then dip the mould briefly in warm water and invert. "A cool place" meant a larder or ice safe; use the refrigerator.
- YieldRoughly a litre of liquid, more once the whipped cream is folded in — enough for about eight to ten servings from a single large mould.
Moulded creams like this one sit between the medieval leach and the French bavarois, and they were the backbone of the Victorian cold sweet: something that could be made in the morning, set in the larder or on ice, and turned out at table with no last-minute work. The setting agent tells the story of the period. Isinglass, prepared from the swim bladders of sturgeon and imported chiefly from Russia, was the prestige gelling agent and expensive enough that cookery writers often offered commercial gelatine as the cheaper substitute — exactly as Cassell's does here. The instruction to fall back on strawberry jam thinned with water is equally of its time: fresh strawberries had a season of a few weeks, while preserves ran the year round, and a household that wanted a pink cream in February might well reach for the jam pot, though other preserves, bottled fruit or colouring alone would have served. The Dictionary of Cookery, issued by Cassell in the later nineteenth century, was aimed squarely at the middle-class kitchen where such a dish signalled a competent cook.