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Italian Cream
2 tablespoons granulated gelatine few grains salt cup cold water 3 egg whites Soak gelatine in cold water; scald milk; mix yolks and sugar, add milk and salt; cook until mixture begins to thicken; add soaked gelatine, chill, and as mixture thickens add the beaten whites of eggs. Mold, chill, and serve. Any flavorings used for Bavarians may be used for Italian creams.
A gelatine-set custard lightened with beaten egg whites — the Italian cream of turn-of-the-century American cookbooks, and a near relation to the Bavarian creams that surround it in this chapter.
- Do not let the custard boilThe hinge of the whole dish. Cook the yolk, sugar and milk mixture over low heat or a water bath only until it coats the spoon, around 170-175F. A few degrees past that and the yolks scramble into grains that no amount of straining fully hides.
- Granulated gelatineTwo tablespoons is roughly three envelopes of modern unflavoured powdered gelatine (an envelope runs about 2 1/4 teaspoons), something over half an ounce. A working rule often quoted in the period was one tablespoon to a pint of liquid, which would point to a firm mould of a quart or so — but this text prints no quantity for the milk, sugar or yolks, so any total is inference.
- SoakingSprinkle the gelatine over the cold water and leave it five minutes until it swells and goes opaque. Add it to the hot custard off the heat and stir until no granules remain; undissolved gelatine settles into a rubbery layer at the bottom of the mould.
- Scalding the milkHeat the milk only until it steams and shows bubbles at the rim, about 180F. Scalding is often explained as a safeguard for raw milk; with pasteurised milk it chiefly helps the sugar and gelatine go into solution and speeds the custard along.
- Timing the egg whites"As mixture thickens" means the moment the custard reaches the consistency of unbeaten egg white. Fold the beaten whites in too early and they float to the top as a separate foam; too late and the mixture is set and will break into lumps.
- Moulding and unmouldingRinse the mould with cold water rather than oiling it. Chill at least four hours, then dip the mould briefly in warm water and invert onto a wet plate, which lets the cream be slid into position.
- YieldThe text as printed gives no quantity of milk or sugar, so no yield can be read off it directly; the gelatine alone would suggest a mould of roughly a quart.
- FlavouringsBavarian creams of the period were commonly flavoured with vanilla, coffee, chocolate, caramel or liqueurs, and any of these would suit here. Add extracts and spirits after the custard is off the heat; acidic fruit purees will slacken the set and should be used sparingly.
Italian cream, in American books of this era, means neither an Italian dish nor cream in the dairy sense — it is a cooked custard stiffened with gelatine and aerated with egg whites, distinguished from a Bavarian cream chiefly by using whipped whites where the Bavarian uses whipped cream. The naming is loose and was already loose in the nineteenth century, when confectioners attached "Italian" to a range of moulded and iced sweets; the label is often traced, though without firm agreement, to the Italian ice and pastry makers working in London and Paris. Its appearance in a chocolate manufacturer's cookbook is straightforwardly commercial: the closing line inviting the cook to use any Bavarian flavouring is an invitation to reach for the chocolate, and the whole genre of moulded gelatine desserts owed its place on the domestic table to cheap packaged granulated gelatine, which by 1900 had replaced the long labour of boiling down calves' feet.