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Macaroon Cream
Soak one tablespoon of granulated gelatine in one-fourth cup of cold water.
Make a custard of two cups of scalded milk, yolks of three eggs, one-third cup of sugar, one-eighth teaspoon of salt; add the soaked gelatine. When dissolved, strain, cool, add two-thirds cup of pounded macaroons, one teaspoon vanilla, stirring until the mixture begins to thicken, then add the whites beaten until stiff and dry. Mold, chill and serve with a garnish of whipped cream.
A gelatine-set custard in the Bavarian cream family, lightened with beaten whites and flavoured with crushed almond macaroons. The hinge is timing: the whites go in at the moment the base begins to set, not before and not after.
- The gelatineOne tablespoon of granulated gelatine is in the same range as one modern envelope (about 7 g / ¼ oz), though a level tablespoon runs somewhat more than an envelope's 2¼ teaspoons. Sprinkle it over the quarter cup of cold water and leave it five minutes to swell before it meets the hot custard.
- Scalded milkScalding means heating to just below the boil, until a rim of bubbles forms at the edge of the pan. It was originally done to kill off souring organisms in raw milk; with pasteurised milk it still shortens the custard's cooking time and helps the sugar dissolve.
- Cook the custard to a numberThe book assumes you know when a custard is done. Stir over low heat or a water bath until it coats the back of a spoon, around 170-175F on a thermometer; much above 180F and the yolks begin to curdle. The straining step will catch any threads that do form, as well as any undissolved gelatine.
- Which macaroonsIn books of this period a macaroon was an almond confection — ground almonds, sugar and egg white, close to what is sold now as an amaretto biscuit or Italian almond macaroon. Coconut macaroons will not give the same flavour or crumb. Two-thirds of a cup pounded is roughly 50-70 g of dry biscuits, crushed to coarse crumbs rather than powder.
- The folding point"Stirring until the mixture begins to thicken" is the whole technique. Cool the custard over ice, stirring, until it has the body of unbeaten cream and just holds a trail. Fold the whites in earlier and they float to the top as a foam layer; later and the set gelatine breaks into lumps.
- Raw whitesThe whites are folded into a cooled base and never cooked. If serving anyone elderly, pregnant, very young or immune-compromised, use pasteurised egg whites, which whip perfectly well to the "stiff and dry" stage.
- Moulding and unmouldingRinse the mould with cold water first so the cream releases cleanly. Chill at least four hours, preferably overnight; to turn it out, dip the mould to its rim in warm water for a few seconds and invert onto a cold plate.
- YieldAbout 1 quart of finished cream, serving six. A 1-quart mould or six individual ramekins both work.
Macaroon Cream belongs to the large family of moulded gelatine desserts — Bavarian creams, Spanish creams, charlottes — that dominated the cold-dessert chapter of American cookbooks around 1900. Their sudden popularity owes less to French cooking than to the arrival of clean, reliable granulated gelatine sold in packets: earlier cooks had to boil down calves' feet or isinglass and clarify the result, a day's work, though moulded creams and calf's-foot jelly do appear in domestic cookbooks well before packet gelatine. Once gelatine came in a paper envelope, the same dessert could be made by a household cook with an ice box, and books of this period print dozens of variations distinguished only by what is stirred in — coffee, chocolate, chopped nuts, fruit pulp, or as here, pounded macaroons. The macaroon itself was then an almond biscuit.