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Caramel Charlotte Russe
Use rule for Vanilla Charlotte Russe No. 1, substituting one cup caramelized sugar for the powdered sugar.
This is a one-line variation, so the work is mostly in the parent recipe. What matters here is understanding what "caramelized sugar" meant to a 1907 cook and how substituting it changes the mixture.
- Caramelized sugarIn books of this period it means granulated sugar melted dry in a heavy pan until amber, then either poured out to harden and pounded, or thinned with a little boiling water into a syrup. Either form works; a syrup blends into cold cream far more readily than shards of hard caramel.
- One cup is by volume, not weightOne cup is by volume, not weight. In books of this period "powdered sugar" usually meant a finely granulated sugar rather than modern confectioners' sugar, so a cup of it weighs appreciably more than the 4 oz a cup of confectioners' sugar weighs today. A cup of finished caramel syrup is heavier still and partly water. The line does not say which is meant; measuring a cup of granulated sugar and caramelizing that, rather than filling a cup with finished caramel, is the safer reading and less likely to leave the dessert wet.
- Caramel tastes less sweetCaramelizing destroys some of the sucrose and adds bitter notes, so the finished cream reads drier than the vanilla version. Take the caramel to a medium amber and no darker; past that the bitterness dominates a mixture that has no acid or salt to balance it.
- Temperature of the caramelLet the caramel cool to lukewarm before it goes anywhere near cream or gelatin. Hot syrup will slacken whipped cream instantly, and prolonged high heat can weaken gelatin's setting power.
- Gelatin in the parent recipeCharlotte russe of this era was set with sheet or granulated gelatin softened in cold liquid and dissolved over hot water. Gelatin strengths varied, and modern powdered gelatin may be stronger than some of what was sold in 1907; if the base recipe seems to call for a great deal, err on the light side and test a spoonful in the refrigerator before molding.
- The moldA charlotte mold is a plain, slightly flared tin, lined with split ladyfingers or strips of sponge cake standing upright against the sides. A 1 to 1.5 quart soufflé dish or straight-sided bowl lined with plastic wrap unmolds cleanly and holds the same volume.
- ChillingAllow at least four hours in the refrigerator, and overnight is better; the cake lining needs time to take up moisture from the cream and stop tasting dry. Dip the mold briefly in warm water to release.
- YieldA charlotte built in a 1.5 quart mold serves eight to ten. It does not keep beyond a day once the gelatin has set and the cake has softened.
Charlotte russe is generally credited to Antonin Carême, who is said to have devised it in the early nineteenth century as a variant of the baked apple charlotte, swapping hot fruit for a cold Bavarian cream and the bread crust for a wall of ladyfingers; the "russe" is usually traced to his period of service to Russian patrons, though this is traditional attribution rather than documented fact. By the time Lowney's Cook Book appeared in 1907, the dish was well established in American households, and the numbering of the parent recipe as "No. 1" indicates the book gives a full master recipe followed by terse substitutions of this kind, which assume a cook already has the vanilla version in hand.