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Three Yolks of Eggs (Half a pint of Whipped Cream)
Half a pint of Whipped Cream.
Three quarters of an ounce of Gelatine.
One tablespoonful of Rum.
Half a teaspoonful of Vanilla Essence.
Coat a wet mould with sweet jelly and decorate it prettily with the pistachio nuts and almonds.
Dissolve the gelatine in the jelly, add the cream and rum, and colour a pale pink with the carmine.
Pour this "lining" mixture into the mould, and see that it covers it all over inside. Dissolve the chocolate in the milk, add the lemon rind, sugar and cinnamon, and allow it to simmer for a few minutes. Pour this on to the yolks of eggs, return it to the stew-pan, add the gelatine, and stir all until the eggs thicken and the gelatine becomes dissolved. When this has cooled add the cream and flavouring and pour it into the mould. When set, turn out the sweet and decorate it with fancifully-cut pieces of jelly.
This is a lined chocolate bavarois — a whipped-cream and gelatine "lining" set against the mould, filled with a chocolate egg custard. As printed it is a fragment: the title carries only part of the ingredient list, and the chocolate, milk, sugar, lemon rind, cinnamon, carmine, jelly and nuts appear in the method with no quantities at all. Treat it as a method to be read alongside a fuller custard-cream recipe.
- The hinge: never boil the custardOnce the chocolate milk goes on to the yolks and back into the pan, keep it below a simmer and stir constantly until it coats the spoon — about 180F/82C. Boiling scrambles the yolks and no amount of straining will bring the set back to smooth.
- Missing quantitiesOnly the cream, gelatine, rum and vanilla are given. A workable custard for this volume is roughly 2 oz plain chocolate, ½ pint milk, 2 oz sugar, a strip of lemon rind and a small piece of cinnamon stick, plus the three yolks, but that is a reconstruction rather than the author's intent.
- Half a pintAn imperial half-pint is 10 fl oz, a little over a US cup. Whether the measure is taken before or after whipping is not clear from the heading. Whip only to soft peaks so it folds into the cooled custard without seizing.
- Gelatine strength has changedThree quarters of an ounce is about 21 g, presumably covering both the lining and the filling, since the recipe calls for gelatine at both stages. Period gelatine and isinglass were less consistent in strength than modern graded powder or leaf, so the same weight today may well give a rubbery, sliceable set; you will probably want to reduce it, testing as you go.
- Sweet jellyA clear, lightly sweetened gelatine jelly, set thinly against the chilled mould and used both as the decorative coat and as the liquid the lining gelatine is dissolved in. Chill the mould well, spoon in a little at a time, and let each layer set before adding nuts.
- CarmineCochineal-based red colouring, sold as liquid carmine by the drop. Any modern red food colouring does the same job; two or three drops is enough for the pale pink asked for.
- ChocolateUnsweetened or plain block chocolate is meant, which is why the sugar goes in separately. Modern dark chocolate at 60-70 per cent works, but reduce the sugar accordingly.
- Unmoulding and yieldSet at least four hours, then dip the mould briefly in hot water and invert on to a chilled dish. With the missing quantities reconstructed as above the finished sweet would fill a mould of roughly a pint and a half and serve about six, but that depends entirely on the reconstruction.
Moulded creams of this kind — a bavarois or crème bavaroise, set with gelatine and lightened with whipped cream — were the backbone of the sweet course in late Victorian and Edwardian professional cookery, and a lined mould like this one was a set piece for showing off. The technique of masking the inside of a chilled mould with clear jelly, pressing pistachios and blanched almonds into it, then building a second coloured cream against that coat before filling the centre, is generally traced to French classical confectionery practice, from Carême onwards, which British high-class cookery books were codifying for private-household cooks. The rum, vanilla, cinnamon and lemon rind are flavourings often paired with chocolate in this period.