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Raspberry cream
Rob a quart of raspberries through a hair sieve, and take out the seeds, and mix it well with cream; sweeten it with sugar to your taste, then put into a stone jug, and raise a froth with a chocolate mill, As the froth rises take it off with a spoon, and lay it upon a hair sieve. When there is as much froth as wanted, put what cream remains in a deep china dish, and pour the frothed cream upon it, as high as it will lie on.
This is a whipped-cream dessert from the era before stabilisers: the froth is raised in a jug, skimmed off, drained, and heaped over the unwhipped remainder. The one thing to get right is the draining step, which is what keeps the pile from weeping.
- "Rob" is "rub"An old printing slip. The berries are pressed through the sieve so the pulp goes through and the seeds stay behind. A fine nylon or stainless mesh sieve stands in for the hair sieve; a food mill with the fine plate also works.
- A quart of raspberriesMeasured by volume, about 4 cups of fruit, very roughly 1 1/4 to 1 1/2 lb, which should yield somewhere near 1 1/2 cups of seedless purée.
- The cream is unmeasuredThe original gives no quantity. Heavy or whipping cream at about twice the volume of purée gives a colour and consistency close to what is described.
- Chocolate millA molinillo, the turned wooden stick rolled between the palms to froth chocolate. A balloon whisk or a hand mixer on medium does the same job; the stone jug kept the splashing contained.
- Why the froth goes on a sieveSkimming and draining sheds the thin liquid, so the froth that is finally heaped up holds its shape far longer than cream whipped straight in a bowl. Set the sieve over a bowl and let it drain a few minutes before piling.
- Don't take the cream too farStop while the froth is still soft and pourable off the spoon; whipped past that point it turns grainy.
- SugarSweeten the purée before frothing rather than after, so it dissolves. Two to four tablespoons of caster sugar suits most raspberries; granulated will leave a grittiness in a cold uncooked cream.
- ServingBest within an hour or two: with no gelatin or egg, the pile settles and the fruit begins to weep.
Frothed creams like this belong to a long English line of "whipt" creams that runs from the seventeenth century through the Georgian dessert table, and the chocolate mill was a familiar piece of kit in a household that drank chocolate, so a cook had one to hand. The technique of raising froth in a deep jug, skimming it onto a sieve to drain, then heaping it over the remaining liquid cream is the same one used for whipt syllabubs, and the two dishes shade into each other in period books; the difference is chiefly that a syllabub is acidulated with wine or cider rather than fruit. Raspberries ripen for a few short weeks, which is why receipts of this kind specify them by the quart.