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Savoury Cream
Ingredients.
A small Lobster.
Half a pint of Cream.
One gill of Aspic Jelly.
One tablespoonful of Mayonnaise.
Half an ounce of French Gelatine.
One gill of Tomato-juice.
The book gives quantities only, in the shorthand of a professional kitchen where the method for a cold savoury cream was assumed knowledge: pounded shellfish, sieved, slackened with the liquids, folded into whipped cream and set in small moulds. The conversions below matter more than usual, because the whole dish stands or falls on the gelatine-to-liquid ratio.
- Gill and half-pintA gill is a quarter of an imperial pint, 5 fl oz, or about two-thirds of a US cup. Half a pint of cream is 10 fl oz. Total liquid is therefore roughly 20 fl oz before the lobster is added.
- Half an ounce of French gelatineAbout 14 g, which in leaf form is roughly seven sheets, though sheet weights vary by brand. That is a firm set for 20 fl oz of liquid, but the aspic already carries its own gelatine, so err toward the lighter side or the cream turns rubbery rather than sliceable.
- Aspic jellyA clarified, well-seasoned savoury jelly, here almost certainly fish or light veal based, bought or made in advance. A good commercial fish or chicken stock set with gelatine and sharpened with a little lemon and tarragon vinegar is the nearest modern equivalent.
- Tomato-juiceAt the date of this book this meant fresh tomatoes crushed and passed through a fine sieve, not the canned, salted, often citric-acid-corrected juice sold today. Sieved fresh or good passata is much closer; if using canned juice, reduce added salt.
- A small lobsterCooked, not raw. A 1 to 1.25 lb lobster yields roughly 4 to 5 oz of picked meat. The coral, if present, was traditionally sieved in with the flesh for colour.
- The hinge: cool before foldingThe gelatine, aspic and tomato juice must be liquid but barely tepid when they meet the whipped cream. Warm liquid deflates the cream; liquid already setting seizes into threads that will not disperse.
- WhippingWhip the cream to a soft, floppy peak only. Anything stiffer will not fold smoothly into a purée, and the finished cream sets grainy.
- Moulds and settingDariole or small baba moulds, lightly oiled or lined with a thin layer of set aspic, chilled at least four hours. Dip a second in hot water to turn out.
- Yield and servingSix to eight small moulds. This is savoury-course portioning, served cold on a croûte or in a nest of cress, not a main dish.
The savoury was a peculiarly British course, taken after the sweet at a formal dinner and largely gone by the middle of the twentieth century. Cold moulded creams of this type descend from the French garde-manger repertoire, where a sieved purée of fish or game bound with aspic and cream was standard work, and English "high class" cookery adopted the technique wholesale along with the French vocabulary — note that the gelatine is specified as French. The tomato juice is the modern touch: tomatoes moved from suspect novelty to everyday flavouring in British kitchens across the second half of the nineteenth century, and here one is used purely for colour and acidity against the richness of lobster and cream.