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Pineapple Bavarian Cream
Soak one-half box or two tablespoons of granulated gelatine in one-half cup of cold water. Heat one can grated pineapple, add one-half cup sugar, one tablespoon lemon juice and the soaked gelatine. Stir until the gelatine is dissolved, then chill in a pan of ice water, stirring constantly; when it begins to thicken, fold in the whip from three cups of cream. Mold and chill. Serve with cubes of lemon jelly.
A straightforward gelatine dessert, but the old measures for gelatine and cream both need translating before it will set properly.
- Gelatine quantity"One-half box or two tablespoons" of granulated gelatine is a little over two modern 1/4-oz envelopes (an envelope holds about 2 1/4 teaspoons, so two tablespoons is nearer two and a half). That is in the right range for a molded mixture of this size.
- "The whip from three cups of cream"This means only the stiff foam skimmed off the top as you whipped it, the old practice of whipping cream in a bowl set in ice and lifting off the froth in stages. The yield of usable whip was well short of the volume of cream started with; with modern cream, whipping a smaller quantity to soft peaks will give a comparable amount of foam.
- Canned grated pineappleGrated pineapple is no longer a standard can size. Use a 20-oz can of crushed pineapple, undrained, or drain it and make up the liquid to about 2 cups with the juice.
- Fresh pineapple will not workThe recipe specifies canned for a reason. Raw pineapple contains bromelain, which digests gelatine and leaves the cream soupy. Canned pineapple has been heated enough to destroy the enzyme; fresh must be boiled first.
- The hinge: fold at the right momentChill over ice, stirring, only until the mixture mounds slightly on the spoon. Fold in the cream too early and it separates into a jelly layer under a foam layer; too late and it sets into lumps you cannot smooth out.
- MoldingRinse the mold with cold water rather than oiling it, and chill at least four hours or overnight. Unmold by dipping the base briefly in warm water.
- YieldAbout 1 1/2 quarts, serving eight. The lemon jelly cubes are a separate small batch of plain lemon gelatine, set firm in a shallow pan and diced.
Bavarian cream, or crème bavaroise, is a nineteenth-century French restaurant preparation: a custard or fruit base set with gelatine and lightened with whipped cream. Its connection to Bavaria is traditional rather than documented, usually explained as a dish made by French chefs in the service of the Wittelsbach court. American cookbooks of the 1900s to 1930s embraced it because two things had recently become reliable and cheap: granulated gelatine sold in boxes of measured envelopes, which replaced the labor of boiling down calves' feet, and canned Hawaiian pineapple, which put a tropical fruit within reach of any household grocery. A cold molded dessert that could be made a day ahead and turned out whole suited the era's ideal of the composed, decorative supper table, and the lemon jelly cubes served alongside are pure period presentation, a bit of glitter against the pale cream.