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Chocolate Charlotte
1/4 box gelatine or 1 tablespoon granulated gelatine 1/4 cup cold water 1/3 cup scalded cream 1 1/2 squares unsweetened chocolate 3 tablespoons hot water 2/3 cup powdered sugar Whip from 3 cups cream 1 teaspoon vanilla 6 lady fingers Melt chocolate by placing in a small saucepan set in a larger saucepan of boiling water, add half the sugar, dilute with boiling water, and add to gelatine mixture while hot. Proceed same as in recipe for Charlotte Russe.
A cold gelatine charlotte in the Boston Cooking School style, leaning on a companion Charlotte Russe recipe for its method. The hinge is temperature: the chocolate-gelatine base must be cooled to the point of thickening before the whipped cream goes in, or it will separate into a chocolate layer and a foam layer in the mould.
- Gelatine measureA quarter of a box of the old sheet gelatine is the same as the tablespoon of granulated given as the alternative, which is roughly one standard envelope (about 1/4 oz). Soften it in the 1/4 cup cold water for five minutes, then dissolve it in the scalded cream.
- Chocolate squaresAn unsweetened chocolate square is 1 oz, so 1 1/2 squares is 1 1/2 oz. Use baking chocolate, not cocoa powder and not a modern bittersweet bar, which already carries sugar.
- Powdered sugarIn books of this period powdered sugar means finely ground granulated, not the cornstarch-cut confectioners' sugar sold today. Either works here; superfine (caster) sugar is the closer match and dissolves cleanly in the hot chocolate.
- The double boiler"A small saucepan set in a larger saucepan of boiling water" is simply a bain-marie. Keep the water below a hard boil and the chocolate off direct heat, since unsweetened chocolate seizes easily.
- "Whip from 3 cups cream"The instruction assumes thin dairy cream beaten and the stiff froth skimmed off as it rises, so three cups of liquid yielded a smaller volume of usable whip. Modern heavy cream whips almost entirely, so rather less of it -- on the order of 1 1/2 to 2 cups -- should give comparable bulk. Beat only to soft peaks so it folds without graining.
- Assembling the mouldSplit the lady fingers and line the sides of a charlotte mould or straight-sided bowl of roughly a quart, cut sides in, before the filling is ready; six fingers will only go so far, so add more if the mould is deep. Fill, cover, and chill at least four hours; overnight sets it firm enough to unmould cleanly onto a plate.
- The two watersThe three tablespoons of hot water in the list are the "boiling water" used to dilute the melted chocolate and half the sugar. The remaining sugar and the vanilla go into the cream and gelatine mixture.
- YieldSix to eight servings from a quart mould. It is rich enough that small wedges are the norm; serve cold, with nothing more than a little unsweetened whipped cream.
Charlotte russe is generally traced to Antonin Carême in the early nineteenth century, a cold Bavarian-cream charlotte set in a mould lined with biscuits rather than the older hot, buttered-bread apple charlotte. By 1900 the form had become a fixture of American cookery-school teaching, where it did useful work: it taught gelatine handling, cream whipping, and the folding of a set base into a foam, all without an oven. The chocolate variation here is exactly that lesson repeated with a flavouring swapped in, which is why the instructions stop at "proceed same as in recipe for Charlotte Russe." Lady fingers could be bought from the baker as well as made at home, and the boxed sheet gelatine the recipe measures by the quarter-box was still a common form; granulated gelatine, offered here as an alternative, was the newer convenience product that would in time displace it.