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Strawberry Charlotte
Take large ripe strawberries, hull them and cut in half, lengthwise, dip them in liquid gelatin. (Made by dissolving two teaspoonfuls of gelatin in one half a cup of boiling water.) Set a mold on cracked ice to keep it cold while you line it with dipped strawberries, putting the flat side against the mold; as the mold is cold the gelatin will harden and hold the fruit in place. Now fill the mold with whipped cream to which has been added enough dissolved gelatin to stiffen it. (Two teaspoonfuls of gelatin to a pint.) Set on the ice to harden. Turn out on a platter and garnish with whipped cream and whole strawberries.
A charlotte held together by nothing but gelatin and cold, which makes temperature control the whole job. Read the two gelatin quantities carefully — they are separate batches, and the recipe never mentions sugar.
- The gelatin, in modern termsUse plain unflavored gelatin. One standard envelope is about 2¼ teaspoons (7 g), so the dipping batch and the cream batch each take a little under one envelope. Sprinkle it over 2 tablespoons of cold water and let it swell for five minutes before adding the hot water, or you will get undissolved grains that never soften.
- Dissolve, don't boilThe instruction to dissolve gelatin in boiling water works, but keep the mixture off direct heat once the granules are in. Gelatin loses setting power if it is actually boiled, and this dessert has no other structure to fall back on.
- Keep the dip liquidThe dipping gelatin will begin to set in the bowl while you work. Stand it in a pan of warm water so it stays syrupy — thick enough to coat a berry, thin enough not to blob. The mold, by contrast, must stay genuinely cold; a bowl of ice water with a handful of salt stirred in is colder than plain ice.
- Add sugar yourselfNeither the coating nor the cream is sweetened here, though the recipe assumes ripe fruit. Two to three tablespoons of sugar and a little vanilla per pint of cream is a reasonable modern amount; taste the berries first.
- Folding the creamWhip the cream to soft peaks, not stiff, then pour the cooled but still fluid gelatin in a thin stream while folding. Gelatin that has cooled too far will seize into rubbery threads through the cream.
- Setting time"Set on the ice to harden" means several hours. In a refrigerator, allow at least 4 hours and preferably overnight before unmolding.
- UnmoldingDip the mold in warm water for five to ten seconds, wipe it dry, and invert onto a chilled platter. The recipe gives no mold size; something on the order of a quart would suit the quantities and serve six to eight. Turn it out no more than half an hour before serving — the whipped cream filling slumps at room temperature.
- Dairy noteThis is an uncooked cream dessert with fresh fruit. Keep it refrigerated up to the moment it goes to the table, and finish it the same day.
A charlotte is properly a mold lined with something — buttered bread in the hot apple version, ladyfingers in the charlotte russe that Antonin Carême is generally credited with popularizing in the early nineteenth century — and filled with fruit or cream. By the time this book was written the word had loosened to mean almost any molded cream dessert, and lining the walls with halved strawberries instead of cake is a simplification: no baking, no sponge, nothing but fruit, cream, and gelatin. It belongs to a moment when powdered gelatin had become cheap and reliable enough for home cooks to treat as an everyday thickener, and when a cookbook could promise a showpiece dessert that never went near a stove. The cracked ice standing in for refrigeration dates it as much as anything on the page.