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Croûtes de Fromage Glacées
Ingredients.
Two ounces of grated Parmesan.
Two ounces of Gruyère.
Half a pint of whipped Cream.
A gill and a half of whipped Aspic.
This entry gives quantities only, in the shorthand of a professional kitchen where the method for a cold cheese cream was assumed knowledge. Everything below is about reading those quantities correctly and understanding what the finished savoury was meant to be.
- No method is givenThe book lists ingredients only and leaves the assembly to the cook. From the ingredients it must be some form of cold cheese cream: cheeses worked into the aspic, whipped cream folded in, and the mixture put onto small croûtes of bread and left to set. The order and the treatment of the bread are inference, not instruction.
- Gill and half-pintThese are imperial measures. A gill is 5 imperial fluid ounces, so a gill and a half is about 7½ fl oz, and half a pint is 10 fl oz — roughly 1¼ US cups of cream and a scant cup of aspic. Whether the volumes are meant before or after whipping is not clear from the phrasing; read as post-whipping they are generous relative to the 4 oz of cheese.
- Whipped aspicAspic here is clarified savoury jelly, usually veal or chicken stock set with gelatine. To whip it, it must be cooled to the point where it thickens to a syrup and then whisked to a foam; whisked while warm it stays liquid, whisked once set it breaks into shards.
- GlacéesThe word can mean iced, chilled or glazed rather than frozen, and for a cheese cream on croûtes a cold-set, chilled dish is the likeliest reading. Nothing in the entry describes a finishing glaze.
- The cheesesParmesan supplies salt and sharpness, Gruyère the body. The recipe calls for the Parmesan grated and says nothing about the Gruyère; since neither will melt into a cold mixture, grating both as finely as possible is the sensible reading, or anything coarser will read as gritty against the cream.
- Folding orderNothing is specified. Working the cheese into the aspic and adding the cream last and lightly would suit the proportions; overworking after the cream goes in knocks out the air and gives a dense result.
- SeasoningNo salt or pepper is listed. Parmesan and a well-made aspic carry a good deal of salt already; cayenne is the usual addition in savouries of this period, and a very small quantity is enough.
- Yield and serviceThe quantities are enough for a good number of small croûtes, though the entry gives no count, size or number of covers. Assemble close to serving and keep refrigerated; a cream-and-jelly mixture at room temperature both slumps and spoils quickly.
The savoury — a small, hot or cold, emphatically salty dish served after the sweet and before dessert — was a fixture of the late-Victorian and Edwardian English dinner, and had no real equivalent in the French service from which most of the rest of the menu was borrowed. Cheese croûtes were one of its familiar forms, usually hot, so a cold version set with whipped aspic may be read as belonging to the same moment as the chaud-froid and the mousse: a kitchen using gelatine to give cold food architecture. The clipped ingredient list without method is characteristic of English "high-class cookery" manuals of the period.