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Russian Cream
Boil, till dissolved, one ounce gelatine in three pints milk. Then add the yolks of four eggs, well beaten, and five ounces sugar. Mix the whole and let it cook. Then strain and set aside to cool. Beat the four whites to a stiff froth, and when the cream is nearly congealed, beat them in. Flavor to your taste, and mould.--Mrs. A. P.
A gelatine-set custard of the Bavarian cream family, written when gelatine came in sheets and cooks judged custard by eye. Two things decide whether it works: keeping the custard below a simmer, and catching the gelatine at the right stage of setting before the whites go in.
- Gelatine, and what an ounce meansOne ounce is four ¼-oz envelopes of modern powdered gelatine, or roughly 10-14 sheets depending on sheet weight, for three pints (6 cups) of milk. That is a firm, sliceable mould in the Victorian manner; if you want a spoonable cream, half that amount is closer to current taste. Soften the powder in a little of the cold milk for five minutes before heating rather than boiling it as written — prolonged boiling can weaken the set.
- Do not let the custard boilOnce the yolks go in, hold the mixture at 170-180F, stirring, until it coats a spoon. "Let it cook" here means thicken, not boil; above about 185F the yolks curdle and no amount of straining recovers the texture.
- The timing of the whites"Nearly congealed" is the hinge. Cool the strained custard over ice, stirring, until it is the thickness of unbeaten cream and just beginning to hold a line from the whisk. Fold whites in earlier and they float to the top as a separate foam; later and the set gelatine breaks into lumps.
- Raw egg whitesThe whites are never heated in this method. Use pasteurised egg whites, or expect the risk that comes with any uncooked egg — the same caveat that applies to old-style mousses and syllabubs.
- FlavouringVanilla extract, a grating of nutmeg, or two to three tablespoons of sherry, brandy or rosewater all suit the period. If you meet a nineteenth-century direction to flavour with bitter almond or "peach kernel water," treat it with care: the kernels are cyanogenic, and modern bitter almond flavouring is prepared free of prussic acid.
- The mouldRinse a mould of 2½ quarts or more with cold water, or oil it very lightly, before filling. Chill at least 5 hours, preferably overnight. To turn out, dip the mould in warm water for a few seconds and invert onto a chilled plate.
- YieldThree pints of milk plus the whipped whites gives roughly 2 quarts, serving 8 to 12. Halve it comfortably.
"Russian cream" was one of a family of moulded gelatine creams — Bavarian cream, charlotte russe and their kin — that spread across nineteenth-century American tables once commercial gelatine made the old, laborious calf's-foot jelly unnecessary. The Russian tag attached itself loosely to fashionable cold desserts in the middle of the century, when service à la russe (courses brought in sequence rather than all at once) and things generally styled "russe" carried an air of continental refinement; it does not indicate a Russian origin so much as a Russian-sounding one. Its appearance in Housekeeping in Old Virginia (published in the late 1870s), credited only to "Mrs. A. P.," is typical of that book's method: Marion Cabell Tyree gathered contributions from some 250 housekeepers in Virginia and neighbouring states and printed them in their own compressed shorthand, assuming a reader who already knew what a custard should look like on the back of a spoon.