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Fruit Charlotte
Line a plain round mould with finger biscuits, carefully put them close together, and form a round or star at the bottom of the mould. Take a pint of cream and whisk it well with a little sugar and half an ounce of gelatine dissolved in a little water. Mix with it half a pint of apple, apricot, strawberry, or any other jam or stewed fruit, and set it to freeze. Cover it with a piece of Savoy cake the shape of the mould, and be careful to fit it exactly, so that when it is turned out it will not be likely to break. Let it remain in the ice until it is sufficiently frozen. Turn out and serve. If fruit is not at hand the cream may be flavored with coffee, burnt almond, vanilla, etc. Time to freeze, about an hour.
This is a charlotte glacée — a frozen cream set inside a wall of sponge fingers — and despite its place among the baked puddings it never sees an oven. The hinge is the gelatine: it must be fully dissolved and still fluid when it goes into the cream, or it will set in threads.
- Finger biscuits and Savoy cakeFinger biscuits are ladyfingers (savoiardi); allow about 24 for a 1.5-quart mould, trimmed flat at one end so they stand upright. Savoy cake is a light sponge, and a plain sponge or trimmed pound cake cut to the diameter of the mould does the same job as a lid.
- Cream and jam quantitiesA pint of cream is 2 cups of heavy cream; half a pint of jam or stewed fruit is 1 cup. If using a very sweet jam, add little or no extra sugar, since preserves are already heavily sugared.
- The gelatineHalf an ounce is about 14 g, roughly two envelopes of powdered gelatine — a firm set by modern taste. Bloom it in a few tablespoons of cold water, warm it just until clear, then temper it with a spoonful of the cream before adding it to the rest; poured cold or hot straight in, it seizes into rubbery strings.
- Whisking orderWhip the cream to soft peaks only, then fold in the fruit and the tempered gelatine. Over-whipped cream turns grainy once frozen and will not settle smoothly against the biscuits.
- Freezing timeAn hour refers to a mould packed in cracked ice and salt. In a domestic freezer at 0F allow 4 to 6 hours, or overnight; a churned base from an ice cream maker can be packed into the lined mould and then frozen firm.
- Lining and unmouldingLine the mould with plastic wrap before setting the biscuits in place, leaving an overhang. To turn out, dip the mould in warm water for five seconds and invert onto a chilled plate; the biscuit wall softens quickly, so serve straight away.
- Flavour variantsBurnt almond means praline — caramelised almonds crushed to a powder — and coffee here is strong brewed or essence, not instant granules. Keep added liquid to a minimum so the cream still sets.
- YieldA 1.5-quart mould gives 6 to 8 portions. Cut with a knife dipped in hot water to keep the biscuit casing from crumbling.
The charlotte in this form descends from the charlotte russe generally credited to Antonin Carême in the early nineteenth century — a mould lined with sponge fingers and filled with bavarian cream — itself a cold cousin of the older baked apple charlotte lined with buttered bread. By the late nineteenth century the pattern had loosened into dozens of household versions: gelatine-set creams, fruit purees, and frozen fills like this one, which household compilers cheerfully grouped with puddings whether or not any baking was involved. The recipe also records a domestic freezing technology now gone: the pail of cracked ice and rock salt, in which an hour was genuinely enough to set a moulded cream.