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Strawberry Sponge
1/3 box gelatine or 1 1/3 tablespoons granulated gelatine 1/3 cup cold water 1/3 cup boiling water 1 cup sugar 1 tablespoon lemon juice 1 cup strawberry juice Whites 3 eggs Whip from 3 cups cream Make same as Orange Charlotte.
Bavarian Cream (Quick) 1/2 lemon, grated rind and juice 1/2 cup white wine 1/3 cup sugar 2 eggs 1 teaspoon granulated gelatine 1 tablespoon cold water Mix lemon, wine, sugar, and yolks of eggs; stir vigorously over fire until mixture thickens, add gelatine soaked in water, then pour over whites of eggs beaten stiff. Set in pan of ice-water and beat until thick enough to hold its shape. Turn into a mould lined with lady fingers, and chill. Orange juice may be used in place of wine, and the cream served in orange baskets.
A gelatine sponge from the era when whipped egg white and cream were folded into a setting jelly and eaten cold, with no cooking step at any point. The proportions are clear enough, but the method places raw egg white at the centre of a dessert that is only ever chilled.
- Why the cautionThe three egg whites are beaten and folded in raw, and the finished sponge is set in a mould in the cold. Nothing in the process brings the egg to a temperature that would deal with Salmonella. Use a current recipe if you want to make this style of sponge.
- A box of gelatineCommercial gelatine was sold by the box, so 'a third of a box' assumes a box size the reader of the day knew. The recipe gives the granulated equivalent itself, 1 1/3 tablespoons, which is the more reliable figure of the two.
- Strawberry juiceThis means pressed and strained juice from crushed ripe berries, not a syrup or a cordial. A considerable quantity of berries is needed to yield a cup, and the sugar in the recipe appears to assume unsweetened juice.
- "Whip from 3 cups cream"The instruction asks for the whipped foam skimmed off three cups of cream, not three cups of whipped cream. Nineteenth-century cooks beat cream in a deep bowl and lifted the stiff froth from the top as it formed, leaving thin cream behind.
- The cross-reference"Make same as Orange Charlotte" means soaking the gelatine in the cold water and dissolving it in the boiling water, adding sugar and juices, chilling until it begins to thicken, then folding in the beaten whites and the cream. The hinge in that method is the moment of setting: fold too early and the mixture separates into a jelly layer and a foam layer, too late and it will not fold at all.
Moulded gelatine sponges belong largely to the later nineteenth century, when refined sheet and granulated gelatine became cheap and reliable enough to replace the long labour of boiling calves' feet or isinglass. Cooking-school books of the period are full of them: charlottes, sponges, Bavarian creams and "snows," all built on the same frame of dissolved gelatine, sweetened fruit juice, and beaten white or cream folded in at the point of setting. The distinction the books drew was largely one of aeration and richness, a sponge leaning on egg white, a Bavarian generally on cream and a cooked custard base.