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Diplomatic Pudding
Line a mold with lemon jelly to the depth of one inch. Place a smaller mold on top of jelly and surround smaller mold with lemon jelly. When jelly is hard, remove, mold and fill with any flavored Bavarian cream.
This is an assembly instruction rather than a full recipe: it assumes you already have the book's lemon jelly and Bavarian cream to hand. The whole thing hinges on getting a clean jelly shell, which is a matter of temperature and patience.
- Lemon jellyA clear gelatin dessert of lemon juice, sugar, water and sheet or granulated gelatin, not lemon curd or preserves. Use enough gelatin for a firm set, since this jelly has to stand as a freestanding wall once unmolded.
- Two moldsChoose a smaller mold that leaves about an inch of clearance all round, so the shell is a uniform thickness. A metal bowl or can of the right size works; anything that will not collapse when weighted is fine.
- Weighting the inner moldThe inner mold will float in liquid jelly. Fill it with cold water, ice or dried beans and hold it centered until the surrounding jelly has begun to thicken, then chill.
- Chill in stagesSet the bottom inch first until firm to the touch, roughly an hour, before adding the inner mold and the side jelly. Pouring warm jelly onto an unset base will simply blend the two layers.
- Removing the inner moldPour a little warm water into it for ten or fifteen seconds to release the grip, then lift straight up. Force it sideways and the jelly wall tears.
- FillingThe Bavarian cream should be at the stage where it mounds on a spoon but still pours. Warm cream will melt the jelly lining; fully set cream will not fill the cavity cleanly.
- Bavarian cream safetyIf your Bavarian cream is the custard type, cook the egg base to 170-175F before folding in the whipped cream and gelatin.
- Unmolding and yieldAllow several hours' chilling; overnight is easier. Dip the outer mold in warm water for a few seconds and invert onto a wet plate so the pudding can be slid into position. The book gives no mold size or yield; a quart mold would serve roughly six to eight.
The name comes from the French pouding à la diplomate, a nineteenth-century restaurant dessert built in a mold from sponge fingers or stale cake, candied fruit, kirsch or maraschino, and a rich custard cream, turned out cold and served with a fruit sauce. Why it was called diplomatic is not documented; it is generally taken as one of the many flattering kitchen names of the period, alongside à la royale and à la financière. The version printed here is a molded gelatin shell with a Bavarian cream center — an appealing arrangement for a household that owned a good copper or tin mold and a supply of ice. Lowney's Cook Book was published by the Walter M. Lowney Company, a Boston chocolate maker, and like most manufacturer cookbooks it filled out its dessert chapter with the standard repertoire of the era.