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VELVET CREAM (another way) (Prepare the velvet cream)
Prepare the velvet cream as in the last recipe. Cut four or five spongecakes into slices, and lay these in a glass dish. If preferred, substitute three ounces of macaroons and one ounce of ratafias for the spongecakes. Place round them a little apricot or greengage jam. A glassful of sherry may be poured over them or not. Take the cream when it is quite cold, and before it begins to stiffen, and pour it over the sweetmeat. Serve when cold and stiff. Probable cost, 3s. 6d. Sufficient for six persons.
An assembly recipe rather than a cooked one: the work is in the velvet cream itself, given in the preceding entry, and the hinge here is catching it at the right moment. Everything else is arranging sponge, jam and wine in a glass dish.
- The critical timingThe cream must be fully cold but still pourable. Poured warm it soaks the sponge to mush and the gelatine sets in a slack, weeping layer; poured after it has begun to set it drags and leaves air pockets. Stir it over a bowl of iced water until it thickens to the consistency of pouring custard, then pour at once.
- Velvet creamThe base recipe stands in the preceding entry; it is a cream set with isinglass, and its own flavourings and proportions should be read there rather than assumed. Modern leaf or powdered gelatine replaces isinglass, scaled from the previous recipe's quantity and aiming at a spoonable, barely-holding set rather than a turn-out mould.
- RatafiasSmall hard almond biscuits, close to Italian amaretti in size and texture. Period ratafias were flavoured with bitter almond; buy commercial amaretti or ratafia biscuits, which use ordinary almond flavouring, rather than attempting bitter almonds at home.
- MacaroonsVictorian macaroons are the crisp almond-paste kind, not the coconut heap or the French macaron. Three ounces is about 85 g, and one ounce of ratafias about 30 g.
- Greengage jamGreengage is a small green-gold plum with a honeyed flavour, still sold as jam in Britain but scarce elsewhere. Any good plum or damson preserve stands in; apricot, the other option given, is the easier find.
- The sherryA glassful means a wine glass, which in Victorian cookery was usually reckoned at about two fluid ounces (60 ml), though larger glasses were sometimes intended. A medium or cream sherry suits the sweetness; reduce it if the cream itself is already sherried.
- Setting and servingThe recipe asks only that it be served cold and stiff; a few hours chilled, or overnight, lets the cream firm and the sponge take up the wine and juices. Serve from the dish with a spoon; this is not a turn-out pudding.
- Cost and yieldThree shillings and sixpence was a considerable sum for a dessert, cream and sherry being the expensive elements. The book gives it as sufficient for six persons.
Velvet cream belongs to the large Victorian family of set creams -- Bavarian creams, blancmanges and their kin -- that depended on isinglass, a gelatine obtained from the swim bladders of sturgeon and other fish, before commercially refined leaf gelatine made setting more reliable and cheap. This second version turns the plain cream into what is essentially a trifle: sponge or almond biscuits, jam, sherry, and a cream poured over rather than a custard. The habit of giving "another way" immediately after a base recipe suits the way such books were used, as a set of interchangeable components a cook could recombine according to what the larder held and what the household could afford. The choice offered between spongecakes and the more expensive macaroons and ratafias, and the frank "a glassful of sherry may be poured over them or not," suggests readers of varying means and varying attitudes to wine at the table.