Home › Pastry Desserts › Creme aux Fruits
Creme aux Fruits
1/4 box gelatine or 1 tablespoon granulated gelatine 1/4 cup cold water 1/4 cup scalded milk 1/2 cup sugar Whites 2 eggs 1/2 pint thick cream 1/3 cup milk 1/3 cup cooked prunes, cut in pieces 1/3 cup chopped figs Soak gelatine in cold water, dissolve in scalded milk, and add sugar. Strain in pan set in ice-water, stir constantly, and when it begins to thicken add whites of eggs beaten stiff, cream (diluted with milk and beaten), prunes, and figs. Mould and chill.
A cold gelatine cream in the Bavarian style, thickened over ice rather than in an oven. Almost everything hinges on catching the gelatine at the right moment.
- The timing hingeThe gelatine mixture must be stirred over ice-water until it is the consistency of raw egg white — thick but still pourable — before anything is folded in. Fold too early and the cream and fruit sink into a layered mess; too late and the gelatine sets in lumps you cannot smooth out.
- Gelatine quantitiesA 1900-era "box" of gelatine held about four tablespoons, so a quarter box and the stated tablespoon of granulated agree: one modern envelope, about 1/4 oz or 7 g. That is right for roughly 2 cups of liquid plus whipped cream.
- "Thick cream"This means heavy or whipping cream, 36 percent fat or better. Half a pint is 1 cup, which whips to about 2 cups. The 1/3 cup of milk was probably added to loosen the very thick period cream before beating; with modern cream you can whip it undiluted.
- Raw egg whitesThe whites are never heated; the scalded milk is far too little to cook them. Use pasteurized whites in a carton, or whip the whites with the sugar over simmering water to 160F as a meringue before folding, if the dessert is for children, the elderly or anyone pregnant.
- StrainingStrain the dissolved gelatine into the chilling pan, as directed. Undissolved granules and the skin from scalded milk both show up as gritty specks in a set cream, and this is the only chance to catch them.
- The fruitCooked prunes means stewed dried prunes, drained and blotted, then cut small; wet fruit will weep into the cream. Dried figs benefit from a soak in hot water and a hard trim of the stem ends before chopping.
- Moulding and unmouldingRinse the mould with cold water rather than oiling it. Chill at least 4 hours, or overnight; dip the mould briefly in warm water and invert onto a cold plate.
- YieldAbout 5 cups, serving six. It does not keep well past a day — the whipped cream slackens and the gelatine tightens.
Crème aux fruits belongs to the family of cold moulded creams that dominated American dessert chapters between roughly 1880 and 1920, once granulated gelatine sold in measured boxes and packets made a set cream a weeknight possibility rather than a professional feat involving calves' feet and a day's boiling. The Boston cooking-school tradition, in which this book sits, taught the method as a formula: soak, dissolve, chill over ice, fold in whites and whipped cream, then vary the additions. Prunes and figs here are not a luxury but the opposite — dried fruit was the reliable winter stock in the storeroom, sweet and available months after the fresh season had closed, and a cook who wanted fruit in February used what was in the box.