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Velvet Cream
To one pint of cream add the yolk of one egg, one heaping wineglass of gelatine; simmer the egg, milk and gelatine together; add sugar to taste; strain it; when nearly cold, add one wineglass of wine, and vanilla to taste.
— Mrs. Charles A. Chapman
A simple set cream in the Bavarian family, written for cooks who already knew how a custard behaves. Two things in it need translating: the gelatine measure and the heat.
- The hinge: never let it boilA single yolk in a pint of cream will curdle if the pan goes above a bare simmer. Heat gently, stirring, until the mixture just coats the back of a spoon, then pull it off; the straining step in the original would catch any egg that does scramble, though it may equally have been meant to catch undissolved gelatine.
- A wineglassIn nineteenth-century American receipts a wineglass is usually reckoned at about 2 fluid ounces, or 1/4 cup, though the measure was never standardised. On that reading the final "one wineglass of wine" is a modest quarter cup, which is right for a pint of cream.
- The gelatine is the ambiguous measureA heaping wineglass of modern powdered gelatine would set a pint of cream to rubber several times over. Household gelatine of this period came as shreds or leaves of variable and generally less reliable setting strength, and was often soaked in water first, so the volume given may include the soaking liquid. Treat the amount as unusable and work from the gelatine you actually have: for a pint of cream a soft spoonable cream needs roughly 1 1/2 teaspoons of powdered gelatine, a mould that must stand up on a plate needs about 2 1/2.
- Bloom itModern powdered gelatine should be sprinkled over a few tablespoons of cold water and left to swell for five minutes before it meets the hot cream, or it will stay grainy no matter how long you simmer.
- The wine"Wine" here most likely means a fortified wine — sherry, madeira or marsala — rather than table wine, though the receipt does not specify. Add it off the heat when the mixture is nearly cold, as the original says, so the alcohol and aroma survive.
- Sugar to tasteAbout 1/3 cup for a pint is a reasonable starting point; err low if the sherry is sweet. Dissolve it in the warm custard, not after chilling.
- Setting and yieldPour into a wetted mould or into glasses and chill at least four hours, better overnight. A pint of cream makes six small servings; this is rich enough that large ones are a mistake.
Velvet cream belongs to the large family of gelatine-set creams — Bavarian cream, Spanish cream, wine jelly cream — that spread through American household cookery over the nineteenth century, as commercially prepared gelatine in sheets and shreds put a dessert once reserved for kitchens with the time to boil down calves' feet within reach of an ordinary cook. Recipes of this kind often call for a single egg yolk rather than a full custard, sherry or madeira for flavour, and a straining step. Its appearance in a village receipt collection under a contributor's name is typical: these books gathered what women in one town actually served to company, and a moulded cream that could be made the day before and turned out at the table was exactly that kind of dish.