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Fruit Bavarian
Soak a tablespoonful of granulated gelatin in a quarter cup of cold water and dissolve in a half cup of boiling water. Into this stir two cups of crushed fruit pulp and half a cup of powdered sugar. Stir until the gelatin begins to harden so the fruit will not sink to the bottom of the mold.
Now add a cup of cream whipped, stirring it into the fruit lightly. Put into a porcelain mold and chill. All one kind of fruit may be used or a mixture of several.
A plain bavarois, and it behaves exactly as gelatin desserts always have — the whole thing hinges on catching the gelatin at the right moment before folding in the cream.
- The hinge: folding at the right set"Stir until the gelatin begins to harden" means chilling the fruit mixture until it has the body of raw egg white, thick enough to hold a trail from the spoon. Fold in the whipped cream too early and it separates into a clear jelly layer under a foam cap; too late and you get rubbery lumps you cannot smooth out.
- Gelatin quantityA tablespoon of granulated gelatin is 3 teaspoons, a little more than one standard envelope (2 1/4 teaspoons, 1/4 oz). Use one envelope plus a scant 3/4 teaspoon for a firm mold that will turn out; a single envelope alone gives a softer set better suited to serving in glasses.
- Fruits that will not setFresh pineapple, kiwi, papaya and figs contain proteases that digest gelatin and leave a soupy mixture. Cooked or canned versions of these are fine, the enzymes having been denatured by heat. Berries, peaches and apricots present no problem.
- Powdered sugarIn books of this period "powdered" often meant a finer-ground sugar rather than the modern confectioners' grade, which today includes a few percent cornstarch as an anti-caking agent. Either dissolves readily in the warm gelatin; superfine sugar works equally well here.
- CreamA cup of heavy or whipping cream, whipped to soft peaks rather than stiff — stiff cream folds in as visible lumps. It roughly doubles in volume, so the finished mixture is considerably more than the sum of its parts.
- The moldThe recipe specifies a porcelain mold; any 1 1/2-quart mold works. Rinse it with cold water rather than oiling it, and to unmold dip briefly in hot water to the rim and invert onto a chilled plate.
- Chilling time and yieldFour hours in the refrigerator minimum, overnight for a clean turn-out. This makes about 5 cups, serving six.
Bavarian cream — bavarois in French kitchens — is a cold custard or fruit puree set with gelatin and lightened with whipped cream, and its connection to Bavaria is traditional rather than documented; it is generally traced to French chefs of the early nineteenth century, possibly ones who had worked for Bavarian noble households. Carême included bavarois among his set creams, and by the late Victorian period it was a common company dessert in English-speaking households, helped by the arrival of reliable powdered gelatin, which spared cooks the long business of boiling calves' feet for their own. This version drops the egg custard base entirely in favor of crushed fruit, which puts it in the lighter, quicker line of the dish: nothing here needs the stove for more than the time it takes to boil half a cup of water.