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Russian Cream
One quart of milk, one cup of sugar, four eggs, one-half package Cox's, gelatine soaked in cold water. Beat the yolks of eggs with sugar, stir with the gelatine into the milk; cook ten minutes or until as thick as custard. When cool add the whites of the eggs well beaten, put in a mould and let stiffen.
— Miss Kate Casey
A late-nineteenth-century moulded gelatine cream of the Bavarian type. The custard base is cooked, but the beaten whites are folded in raw and the dessert is only chilled, never heated again — which is where it fails by current standards.
- Raw whites, never heatedFour egg whites are beaten and stirred into a custard that has already cooled, then left in a mould to stiffen. Nothing in the finished dish reaches a temperature that would kill Salmonella. Use a current recipe, or pasteurised whites, if you want a moulded cream.
- The custard is not a safeguardCooking the yolk-and-milk base "ten minutes or until as thick as custard" takes that portion to custard-thickening temperature, well above what is needed for safety — but it is deliberately cooled before the whites go in, so the whites gain nothing from it.
- Cox's gelatineA Scottish brand widely sold in America at the time. "One-half package" is not a fixed quantity today: period package sizes varied, so any modern equivalent (commonly given as one to two envelopes) is a guess, and the original gives no reliable measure.
- "Soaked in cold water"Blooming, in modern language. Granulated gelatine needs to swell in cold liquid for five to ten minutes before it will dissolve smoothly in hot; dropped straight into warm milk it forms lumps that never disperse.
- The mouldA quart of milk plus eggs and sugar fills a mould of about six cups and would have served eight or so. Moulds of the period were often tinned copper or earthenware, dipped briefly in warm water to release.
- Name and expectationsDespite "cream," there is no cream in it — the richness comes entirely from milk, yolks and the aeration of the whites. A modern cook expecting a Bavarian cream texture would find this considerably leaner.
Moulded gelatine desserts were a status dish in nineteenth-century American households, because until commercially prepared gelatine became cheap they meant hours of boiling calves' feet or isinglass. Cox's, a Scottish firm whose sparkling gelatine was sold in America in the later nineteenth century, was one of the brands that changed that, and receipt books of the period name it the way a cook today might specify a particular brand of chocolate. "Russian cream" is a loose family name rather than a fixed formula — it turns up in community cookbooks attached to everything from wine jellies to whipped custards, and the Russian association is often linked, though without firm evidence, to the vogue for service à la russe and for elaborate cold entremets rather than to any dish from Russia. Its appearance here, credited to a named contributor, is characteristic of the community cookbook: a dessert impressive enough to bring to a supper, cheap enough to make from a quart of milk and the eggs on hand.