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Chocolate Charlotte Russe
1 pint cream whipped until stiff cup powdered sugar 1 cup Lowney's Cocoa 3 egg whites ¼ teaspoon salt 2 ounces Lowney's Premium 1 teaspoon vanilla or Chocolate or 1 tablespoon brandy sponge cake or macaroons Melt the chocolate over hot water, or mix the cocoa with one quarter cup hot water; add sugar, cream whipped until stiff, whites of eggs beaten until stiff, salt and flavoring. Line a mold with lady fingers or sponge cake; fill with cream mixture, and chill at least one hour. This mixture may be molded in individual molds; then one half hour will be sufficient to chill it. See colored illustration, Plate II, opposite.
The text as printed is a mousse held in a cake-lined mold, and it depends on raw egg whites that are never heated at any stage. The notes below explain the problem and the several places where the original measurements have come apart in printing.
- Raw egg white, never cookedThree egg whites are beaten stiff, folded into cold whipped cream and chilled for an hour. Nothing in the method brings the eggs to a temperature that would deal with Salmonella, and the finished dessert sits at refrigerator temperature until served. A current recipe for chocolate mousse or charlotte should be used instead.
- A missing quantityThe salt reads ¼ teaspoon, as printed. The sugar line, however, still gives no quantity at all: "cup powdered sugar" has lost its fraction, so start with about half a cup and sweeten to taste.
- Two alternatives, not two additionsThe column is a set of either/or choices badly run together — cocoa or 2 ounces of Premium chocolate, vanilla or a tablespoon of brandy, sponge cake or macaroons. It is not an ingredient list to be followed straight down.
- Lowney's Cocoa and Premium ChocolateLowney's cocoa was an unsweetened cocoa and Premium was unsweetened baking chocolate, so the sugar in the recipe was expected to supply all the sweetness. Neither product is sold under those names today.
- No gelatinUnlike many charlottes of the period this one sets on whipped cream and beaten whites alone, which is presumably why the chilling time given is so short; a mixture of this kind would not be expected to hold its shape long out of the refrigerator.
The charlotte russe is generally traced to Antonin Carême, who is said to have renamed an earlier charlotte à la parisienne in honor of his Russian patron; the classic form is a mold lined with ladyfingers and filled with bavarian cream. By the time this book appeared the American version had become simpler and often gelatin-free, a straightforward whipped-cream filling inside a shell of sponge cake or store-bought ladyfingers, and in New York it was sold from bakery counters in a paper cup with the cream piped on top. Lowney's Cook Book belongs to a genre of manufacturer-sponsored cookbooks — the Walter M. Lowney Company of Boston produced cocoa and baking chocolate, and the volume names its products by brand, with color plates to advertise the results.