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Petits Pains de Fraises
(Little Strawberry Moulds.) Ingredients.
One pound of Strawberries for half a pint of Purée.
One pint of Wine Jelly.
Half a glass of Maraschino.
Half an ounce of French leaf Gelatine.
This entry gives proportions only — the method was assumed knowledge in a professional kitchen of the period. What follows is what a modern cook needs to reconstruct it, plus the places where the old measures are genuinely vague.
- The hinge: gelatine strengthHalf an ounce (about 14 g) of leaf gelatine to half a pint of purée plus a pint of already-set wine jelly gives a firm, sliceable set by modern standards, though the recipe does not say how much gelatine is already in the jelly. Leaf gelatine of the period was not standardised as today's sheets are, so weigh rather than count leaves, and be prepared for a rubbery result at the full amount.
- "Petits pains" means the mouldThe name suggests small individual moulds turned out so they resemble little rolls; the entry itself specifies no shape. Any 4–5 fl oz dariole, timbale or muffin-sized mould will serve.
- Wine jellyA period wine jelly is white wine (or sherry or champagne) sweetened, flavoured with lemon, and set with gelatine or isinglass. The entry does not say how the pint is used; the usual handling would be to line the moulds with a thin set layer and work the rest into the strawberry mixture.
- "Half a glass" of maraschinoGenuinely ambiguous. A liqueur glass of the era held roughly 1 fl oz, so half a glass is about 1 tablespoon; a wine glass reading would give twice that. Start at a tablespoon and taste, since maraschino is assertive.
- One pound of strawberries for half a pintAbout 450 g of hulled fruit, crushed and sieved, is reckoned here to yield the half pint (about 280 ml) called for. Sieve rather than blend — blending aerates the purée and breaks up the seeds.
- Assembly and settingLine the chilled moulds with a thin coat of wine jelly, fill with the sweetened purée blended with the dissolved gelatine and maraschino, and chill until firm — four hours or overnight. Dip briefly in warm water and turn out onto a cold plate.
- YieldThe quantities make roughly 1½ pints of finished mixture, which at the 4–5 fl oz mould size suggested above fills six or seven moulds; more if the moulds are smaller.
- ColourStrawberry purée fades to brick-pink once set with gelatine. Cochineal was the usual nineteenth-century corrective; a small amount of raspberry purée will restore colour, though it does bring its own flavour with it.
"High class cookery" books of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries were written for cooks in large private houses, where the sweet course was expected to look like a pastry chef's work, and the vocabulary of the kitchen was French even when the cook was not. Petits pains — little loaves — describes the shape rather than the substance: a moulded fruit jelly or cream turned out in neat individual portions, one per guest, in the same family as the bavarois and chartreuse that fill the sweets chapters of these books. The maraschino points to Dalmatia, where the liqueur was distilled from marasca cherries and their stones and shipped from Zara; by this period it was a standard flavouring in the professional larder, used with strawberries and pineapple in particular. The terseness of the entry is characteristic: recipes like this were aides-mémoire for someone who had already been taught to line a mould with jelly, not instructions for a beginner.