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Almond Bavarian Cream
Follow directions for making Plain Bavarian Cream, adding a cup of finely blanched almonds and one-half teaspoon of Larkin Almond Flavoring Extract. Many pleasing variations may be made with the Plain Bavarian Cream as a basis.
This is a variation rather than a standalone recipe, so everything hinges on the plain Bavarian cream it builds on: a stirred custard set with gelatin and lightened with whipped cream. The notes below cover the almond additions and the points in the base method most likely to trip up a modern cook.
- The hinge: fold at the right momentThe custard must be cooled until it is syrupy and just beginning to set before the whipped cream goes in. Fold too early and the cream melts into a thin liquid that sets in layers; too late and you get lumps of jelly through the finished cream.
- Almond extract is stronger nowAlmond extract is potent -- Almond flavour comes chiefly from benzaldehyde, and a little goes a long way; there is no way to know how the strength of the Larkin extract compared with a modern bottle. Start with 1/4 teaspoon, taste the custard before the cream is folded in, and add more only if needed.
- Larkin Almond Flavoring ExtractA house brand sold by mail order and long discontinued. Any commercial almond extract stands in; pure extract rather than imitation gives a rounder flavour against the dairy.
- "Finely blanched almonds"This means almonds with the skins slipped off after a minute in boiling water, then chopped or ground fine. A cup of whole almonds is roughly 5 oz; grind them dry and briefly, or they turn to butter and the cream will taste oily.
- Gelatin equivalentsOlder recipes call for gelatin by the box, the sheet, or the tablespoon rather than the modern envelope. If your base recipe gives a weight or a sheet count, one 1/4-oz envelope of powdered gelatin is about 2 1/4 teaspoons. Bloom it in cold liquid, then dissolve it in the hot custard rather than boiling it.
- Cook the custard to temperatureTake the custard base to 170-175F, stirring, until it coats a spoon. That both thickens it properly and brings the eggs to a safe temperature; above about 180F it will scramble.
- Mould and chillRinse the mould with cold water or brush it very lightly with a neutral oil. Chill at least 4 hours, preferably overnight; to turn it out, dip the mould a few seconds in warm water and invert onto a cold plate.
History: Bavarian cream, bavarois in French kitchen French, has little obvious connection to Bavaria; one traditional explanation credits French cooks who worked for Bavarian nobility, but the link is not documented. The dish as we know it belongs to the French repertoire, codified in the nineteenth century as a custard set with gelatin and lightened with whipped cream. Its appearance here, reduced to a one-line variation on a "plain" base, tells you a good deal about American home cooking around 1900: commercial powdered gelatin had made a formerly laborious dish routine, and cookbooks began teaching a master formula plus a list of flavourings rather than a separate recipe for each. The instruction to buy a named brand of extract is the other period marker. Books like this one were often produced by grocery and mail-order firms, and a recipe that calls for the company's almond flavouring is doing two jobs at once.