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Pineapple Bavarian
Prepare the same as Strawberry Bavarian, and substitute one can grated pineapple for strawberry juice.
Peach or Apricot Bavarian Use rule for Strawberry Bavarian, using one pint crushed peaches or apricots for strawberry juice, and garnish with halves of peaches or apricots.
A pair of variations that lean entirely on the Strawberry Bavarian at the head of the group — gelatine softened and dissolved, sweetened fruit, whipped cream folded in, chilled in a mold. The substitutions look trivial but one of them has a chemical catch.
- Use canned pineapple, not freshFresh and frozen pineapple contain bromelain, an enzyme that digests gelatine and leaves the dessert a sweet soup that never sets. The canning process heats the fruit enough to destroy it, so the can called for here happens to be the form that works. If you want fresh pineapple, bring the crushed fruit to a full boil for several minutes and cool it before it meets the gelatine.
- "One can" in this periodCan sizes were not standardised, so the quantity is approximate; a modern 20-oz can of crushed pineapple is a reasonable stand-in. Drain off some syrup if it looks much wetter than a fruit purée.
- SweetnessThe base rule is written for tart strawberry juice. Canned pineapple and canned peaches in syrup arrive already sweetened, so cut the sugar in the base by about a third and taste the fruit mixture before the cream goes in — once it is cold and whipped it will read less sweet than it does warm.
- Gelatine measureIf the base recipe calls for a half-box or an ounce of gelatine, that is old sheet or granulated stock. One modern envelope is about 2 1/4 teaspoons, roughly 1/4 oz, and sets a pint of liquid softly. Scale from the base rule; for a molded Bavarian of about this volume two envelopes is a reasonable starting point.
- The folding pointChill the sweetened fruit and dissolved gelatine until it thickens to raw egg white, then fold in the whipped cream. Fold too early and the cream sinks into a clear layer at the bottom; too late and you get rubbery streaks that will not blend.
- Peaches and apricotsA pint of crushed fruit means about 2 cups of pulp — four to five medium peaches, or eight to ten apricots. Peel peaches first; the skins toughen and stay visible in a pale cream.
- Chilling and unmoldingFour hours in the refrigerator, or overnight. Dip the mold in warm water for a count of ten and invert onto a chilled plate; a wetted mold is easier to release than a greased one.
- YieldProbably around a quart of mixture, serving six to eight, depending on the base rule's cream quantity.
Bavarian cream — crème bavaroise — is a French mold of set custard or fruit base lightened with whipped cream and turned out, current in nineteenth-century restaurant cooking though with earlier antecedents, and it became a staple of American cookbooks once reliable powdered gelatine was cheap. Lowney's Cook Book was published by the Walter M. Lowney Company, a Boston chocolate maker, and like many manufacturer cookbooks of the era it surrounds its chocolate recipes with a full general repertoire so the book earns a place on the kitchen shelf. The pineapple version tells you something about 1907 grocery shelves: canned Hawaiian pineapple was becoming a more common and cheaper item, and a cookbook could assume a pint of tropical fruit in the pantry year-round. That the recipe works at all owes something to canning, since the heat that preserves the fruit also destroys the enzyme that would otherwise wreck the gelatine.