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Strawberry Cream
Ingredients.
One pint of fresh Strawberries.
Three ounces of Castor Sugar.
Three-quarters of an ounce of French Gelatine.
Half a pint of Cream.
The juice of one Lemon.
Take all the stalks off the strawberries, put them on a silk or hair-sieve, sprinkle half an ounce of sugar over them, and pass them through the sieve. Put the gelatine into a stewpan with two tablespoonfuls of cold water, the rest of the sugar, and the juice of the lemon. When the gelatine is melted, strain it into the strawberries, add the cream well whipped, stir all lightly together, pour into a pint mould, and set.
A straightforward moulded fruit cream, but two things in it need translating: the gelatine quantity and the temperature at which the two mixtures meet.
- Temper the gelatineThe dissolved gelatine must be barely warm — around body temperature — when it goes into the cold purée, and the purée should not be fridge-cold. Hot gelatine hitting cold cream sets in threads, and the finished cream comes out streaked with rubbery specks rather than smooth.
- Gelatine strengthThree-quarters of an ounce (about 21 g) is a great deal by modern standards. Gelatine of this period varied in strength from brand to brand, and modern gelatine at that rate gives a firm, sliceable, rather bouncy cream. Around 10-12 g of modern gelatine should set a pint of this mixture well enough to unmould.
- Two tablespoons of waterThat is enough to soften the gelatine but not much; let it stand and swell for five minutes before warming, and take the pan off the heat the moment the grains vanish. Boiled gelatine loses setting power.
- Castor sugarSuperfine or caster sugar. Granulated works but wants stirring long enough to dissolve in the cold purée.
- A pint of strawberriesA pint here is a measure of volume, not weight: roughly 12-14 oz / 340-400 g of hulled fruit, yielding something around half a pint of sieved purée. Sieving rather than blending is deliberate: it removes the seeds and keeps the colour clear. A fine nylon sieve does the job of the old hair sieve.
- Whipping the creamHalf a pint (an imperial half-pint, about 10 fl oz, or roughly 1 1/4 US cups) of double or heavy cream, whipped only to soft peaks. Stiffly whipped cream folds in as lumps and will not blend lightly, which is what the instruction "stir all lightly together" is guarding against.
- The mouldThe recipe says a pint mould, but once the cream is whipped the mixture may overfill it; a 1.5-pint mould, rinsed with cold water or lightly oiled, is safer. Chill several hours, and dip the mould briefly in hot water to turn it out.
- YieldServes four to six as a cold sweet. It is best eaten the day it is made; the colour of the fruit may dull on keeping.
Moulded creams stiffened with gelatine were a staple of the cold-sweet chapter in late Victorian and Edwardian household cookery, and "French gelatine" in a recipe of this date generally meant sheet gelatine imported from the Continent. The technique — a fruit purée, sweetened, set with just enough gelatine, lightened with whipped cream and turned out of a shaped mould — is closely related to the French bavarois. The lemon juice is there for more than flavour; acidity sharpens strawberries that have been dulled by sugar and sieving, and it lifts a mixture that can otherwise taste flatly of sweetened cream.