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Peach Bavarian Cream
1 pint can or nine fresh peaches 1/2 box of gelatine 1/2 pint of cold water 1 pint of cream Cover the gelatine with the water and let soak a half hour. Press the peaches through a colander; if fresh, first stew and sweeten them.
Stir the gelatine over boiling water until dissolved. Whip the cream. Add the gelatine to the peaches, mix, and turn into a tin basin; stand the basin in a pan of cracked ice, and stir constantly until it begins to thicken; then add the whipped cream, stir carefully until thoroughly mixed; turn into a mould and stand aside to harden. Serve with whipped cream heaped around the base.
A straightforward cold-set cream that depends almost entirely on temperature control: the gelatine must be dissolved gently and the purée cooled to the point of thickening before the whipped cream goes in. Everything else is measuring.
- The hinge: fold at the right momentThe purée has to be stirred over ice until it just begins to set — thick enough to coat the spoon but still fluid. Fold the cream in too early and it sinks into a dense layer; too late and the mixture seizes into lumps that will not blend.
- "Half a box of gelatine"This is genuinely ambiguous. Period boxes of granulated gelatine commonly ran around an ounce, divided into papers or envelopes, so half a box is usually read as about 1/2 oz (14 g), roughly two modern envelopes, which gives a reasonable set for a mixture of this size. If your gelatine is sheet, weigh it rather than counting leaves.
- Never boil the gelatine"Stir over boiling water" means a bain-marie — the bowl sits above the water, not in it. Prolonged heating at or near boiling can weaken gelatine's setting strength and leave the mixture slack.
- Canned versus fresh peachesCanned peaches of the period were generally packed in syrup, so drain the can before the fruit goes through the sieve, or the cream will be soupy and cloying. Fresh peaches get stewed and sweetened first, as directed; the recipe gives no quantity, so sweeten to taste as you go.
- Cream"Cream" here means heavy or whipping cream at 36 percent or better. Whip to soft peaks only — stiff cream folds in badly and leaves streaks.
- Tin basin and cracked iceAny metal bowl set in a bowl of ice and water does the same job, and conducts faster than glass or ceramic. Ice water beats ice alone, since the water makes contact with the whole surface.
- Setting time"Stand aside to harden" meant an icebox or a cold larder. Refrigerate at least 4 hours, or overnight for a mould you intend to turn out. Dip the mould briefly in warm water and invert onto a chilled plate.
- YieldThe pint of purée, half-pint of water and pint of cream come to well over a quart once the whipped cream is folded in; allow a 2-quart mould, serving six to eight, with extra cream whipped for the base as directed.
Bavarian cream — bavarois in French kitchen usage — reached English-language cookbooks in the nineteenth century as a moulded cream set with gelatine or isinglass, and by the 1890s it had become one of the standard American dinner-party sweets, endlessly varied by flavouring: coffee, chocolate, strawberry, orange, peach. Its appearance in a book of hot weather dishes is no accident. Cold moulded desserts required no oven at the hottest time of year, and they had only recently become practical for ordinary households: commercially packaged granulated gelatine in pre-measured boxes removed the long labour of boiling calves' feet, while the ice trade put cracked ice within reach of urban kitchens for the ice bath and the cold larder this recipe assumes. The connection to Bavaria itself is traditional rather than documented, and cooks of the period used the name loosely for almost any cream stiffened with gelatine and lightened with whipped cream.