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Caramel Charlotte Russe
1/4 box gelatine or 1 tablespoon granulated gelatine 1/4 cup cold water 1/2 cup scalded cream 1/3 cup sugar, caramelized 1/4 cup powdered sugar 1 1/2 teaspoons vanilla Whip from 3 1/2 cups cream 6 lady fingers Make same as Charlotte Russe, adding caramelized sugar to scalded cream before putting into gelatine mixture.
A short variation entry that leans on the book's base Charlotte Russe: a gelatine-set whipped cream, flavoured here with burnt sugar, moulded inside a wall of lady fingers. The instructions assume you have the parent recipe to hand, so the working method is reconstructed below.
- The hinge: caramel into hot cream, not coldMelt the 1/3 cup sugar in a dry heavy pan until it is deep amber, then pour it into the hot scalded cream off the heat and stir until dissolved. Adding caramel to cold cream or to the already-set gelatine leaves hard shards; adding cream to a screaming-hot pan will make it seize and spatter.
- "1/4 box gelatine"The recipe's own equivalence puts a box at four tablespoons, and boxes of granulated gelatine of the period were commonly divided into four portions of roughly a tablespoon. One standard modern envelope (1/4 oz, about 2 1/4 teaspoons) is close enough and will set this quantity.
- Soften, then dissolveSprinkle the gelatine over the 1/4 cup cold water and let it stand five minutes until swollen, then stir in the hot caramel cream until no grains remain. Do not boil the mixture after the gelatine is in.
- "Whip from 3 1/2 cups cream"This is not 3 1/2 cups of whipped cream: the cream is measured before beating. Period books direct the cook to beat a bowl of cream and skim the stiff froth from the surface as it forms. Beat 1 1/2 to 2 cups of modern heavy cream to soft peaks for a comparable volume of whip.
- Scalded creamHeat until it steams and shivers at the edges, roughly 180F. Whatever the original reasons for scalding, here it simply gives you a hot liquid to dissolve the caramel and gelatine.
- Folding temperatureSet the gelatine mixture in a bowl over ice and stir until it thickens to the consistency of unbeaten egg white, then fold in the whipped cream and the powdered sugar and vanilla. Fold too early and the cream separates into a jellied layer under a foam layer.
- Lining the mouldSplit the lady fingers and stand them cut side inward around a 1-quart mould or a 6-inch springform, trimming to fit snugly. Six fingers is barely enough for a small mould; buy a dozen.
- Chilling and yieldFour hours in the refrigerator, or overnight, before unmoulding onto a cold plate. Serves six.
Charlotte russe is generally traced to Antonin Carême in the early nineteenth century, a cold cousin of the baked apple charlotte, built in a mould lined with biscuits and filled with bavarian cream. By the time American cooking schools took it up around 1900 the filling had been simplified from a custard base to sweetened whipped cream held together with a little gelatine, which is exactly the version this book teaches, then varies by the flavouring added to the scalded cream. Caramelised sugar, called "burnt sugar" in period kitchens, was one of the few strong flavourings a cook could make from a staple already in the house, and it appears throughout books of this era in cakes, custards and sauces where chocolate or coffee would otherwise be reached for. The chain of short variation entries also tells you something about how these books were used: the pupil learned one master method thoroughly and then worked through the substitutions, rather than reading each dessert as a separate recipe.