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Velvet Cream
One-half box of Larkin Gelatine One-half cup of cold water One cup of boiling water Two cups of sugar One quart of cream One teaspoon of Larkin Vanilla Flavoring Extract Moisten the Gelatine in the cold water for three minutes and pour over it the boiling water. Whip the cream and add the sugar to it. Beat the Gelatine into it, add the flavoring, and chill.
A gelatine-set whipped cream — essentially a Bavarian cream without the custard. The whole thing hinges on temperature: the gelatine must be cool enough not to melt the cream, but not so cool that it sets into threads.
- How much gelatineLarkin's boxes are long gone and their capacity is not stated here, so "one-half box" is genuinely ambiguous. For one quart of whipped cream plus 1½ cups of liquid, about two modern ¼-oz envelopes (½ oz total, roughly 4½ teaspoons) gives a soft, sliceable set; a third envelope makes it firm enough to unmold cleanly.
- Softening timeThree minutes in cold water is optimistic even for the older granulated gelatines. Give it 5 to 10 minutes, until the grains are swollen and no dry specks remain, then add the boiling water and stir until completely clear — undissolved granules show up as gritty flecks in the finished cream.
- The temperature hingeLet the dissolved gelatine cool to lukewarm — barely warm to the fingertip — before it goes anywhere near the cream. Hot gelatine melts whipped cream back to liquid; cold gelatine seizes on contact and leaves rubbery strings running through the dessert.
- Whipping and foldingWhip to soft peaks only, not stiff. "Beat the Gelatine into it" overstates the case for modern cream: pour the gelatine in a thin stream while folding, and stop as soon as it is uniform.
- The sugarTwo cups of sugar to a quart of cream is very sweet by current taste, and this much sugar can make the whipped cream looser to work with. One cup, or 1 1/4, suits most palates and will not affect the set.
- Chilling and molding"Chill" means at least 4 hours, and overnight is better. If you want to turn it out, rinse the mold with cold water first and dip it briefly in warm water to release.
- YieldClose to two quarts of finished cream — 10 to 12 servings. It does not keep well past a day; the gelatine tightens and the cream begins to weep.
Good Things to Eat came from the Larkin Company of Buffalo, a soap manufacturer that grew into one of the great American mail-order houses under the slogan "Factory-to-Family." Customers bought Larkin products in clubs and earned premiums — furniture, china, and cookbooks like this one — which explains why the gelatine and the vanilla in this recipe are both specified by brand: the book is a catalogue as much as a kitchen manual. The dessert itself belongs to the large family of gelatine-set creams that spread through American home cooking once packaged granulated gelatine spared the cook a day spent boiling calves' feet, though the dish still needed hours of chilling to set. Called variously velvet cream, Spanish cream, or Bavarian cream — period usage was inconsistent, and the names were often said to turn on whether eggs and milk were involved — these puddings were prized precisely because they looked expensive and cost little beyond the cream.