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Caramel Italian Cream
To Italian Cream add one cup caramelized sugar to custard before adding gelatine.
A one-line variation that assumes you already have the book's Italian Cream in front of you: a stirred custard set with gelatine and lightened with whipped cream. The only new work is the caramel, and where it goes.
- Read the base recipe firstItalian Cream in this period generally means a gelatine-set cream, and this line confirms the book's version is a custard with the gelatine added after. Whether whipped cream is folded through, and at what stage, has to be taken from the base entry rather than assumed. This entry changes nothing but the flavour.
- Caramelized sugarMost likely a cup of granulated sugar melted dry in a heavy pan until well browned, then loosened with a few tablespoons of hot water to make a pourable syrup; the line could equally mean a cup of finished syrup. Let it stop bubbling before it meets the custard, or it will seize.
- Order mattersThe caramel goes into the custard before the gelatine, as written, rather than into a mixture that has already begun to set.
- Custard temperatureCook the custard base to 170-180F, thick enough to coat a spoon. Above about 185F the eggs curdle and no amount of caramel will hide the texture.
- GelatinePeriod recipes often call for a sheet or a fraction of a box, both of which have shifted in strength. Roughly 1 envelope (about 2 1/4 tsp) of granulated gelatine sets 2 cups of liquid to a spoonable cream; use a little less if the mixture is to be served in glasses rather than turned out.
- SweetnessA cup of caramel is a substantial addition. Cut the sugar in the base custard by half, or the finished cream will be cloying rather than bitter-edged.
- Setting and servingFour hours in the refrigerator, or overnight. Rinse the mould in cold water before filling so it releases; a brief dip in warm water turns it out. Expect six servings from a quart mould.
"Italian cream" in Anglo-American cookery of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries meant a moulded custard set with gelatine and enriched with whipped cream -- close kin to what French kitchens called bavarois and what later American books simply called a Bavarian cream. The name is traditional rather than geographic; by the time Lowney's Cook Book appeared in the first decade of the twentieth century, it signalled a genre of chilled moulded desserts rather than any Italian original. Caramel as a flavouring, made by melting sugar dry until it darkened, appears throughout period dessert chapters as caramel custard, caramel ice cream and caramel sauce. This entry's telegraphic brevity is typical of the book's method: a chapter establishes a base preparation, then a run of one-line variations pivots it in different directions without reprinting a word.