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Ribbon Bavarian
Use rule for Plain Bavarian, and divide into three parts before adding the cream.
Into one third stir one quarter cup strawberry juice and color pink; into another third add two tablespoons chopped almonds and color green; flavor the other third with vanilla.
Add one third of the whipped cream to each of these thirds and arrange in layers in charlotte russe molds. Chill and garnish with beaten cream, strawberries, and nuts.
One must work quickly to keep the gelatine mixture from hardening. Should it harden before it can be used, set the dish containing the gelatine mixture into a pan of hot water and stir until liquefied. 3 cups milk 1 cup rice 1 teaspoon salt ½ cup sugar
A three-layer variation that assumes you already have the book's Plain Bavarian in front of you. Everything here depends on managing the gelatine's setting window, so read the whole thing before you start.
- The hinge: work in stages, not in a rushEach layer must be set firmly enough to support the next but still tacky on top, or the ribbons slide and bleed into one another. Pour one layer, chill it 15-20 minutes, then pour the next while keeping the remaining two thirds at room temperature and stirring occasionally so they stay pourable.
- Reviving a hardened mixtureThe instruction to set the bowl in hot water and stir is sound, but use hot tap water rather than simmering water and lift it out the moment it flows again. Gelatine can lose setting power if it is overheated or held hot for long, so avoid boiling it back to liquid.
- Gelatine strengthFollow whatever the Plain Bavarian rule specifies, but note that early boxed gelatine varied in strength. Modern powdered gelatine runs about one envelope (2¼ teaspoons, 7 g) to set two cups of liquid softly enough for a molded cream. Sheet gelatine is usually reckoned at roughly three to four sheets per envelope, though sheets differ by grade.
- The added strawberry juiceA quarter cup of juice is extra liquid the base recipe never counted on, and it will slacken the pink third. Either reduce the milk in that portion by the same amount or press the juice from about six ounces of hulled berries and cook it down slightly first.
- The green thirdThe recipe tints this portion green while adding chopped almonds; green-colored almonds were a common stand-in for pistachios in period cookery. Real shelled pistachios, chopped, do the job without coloring; if you want the period look, a drop of green is all it takes.
- Charlotte russe moldsRound tin molds, plain-sided or slightly flared, commonly around a quart. A loaf pan, a bowl, or individual ramekins all work; glass shows the layers off, which the tin never did. Unmold by dipping the outside in warm water for five seconds and inverting.
- The stray ingredient listThe three cups milk, one cup rice, teaspoon salt and half cup sugar at the end belong to a neighboring rice recipe, not to this one. Ignore them.
Bavarian cream, bavarois in French kitchen usage, is a custard set with gelatine and lightened with whipped cream; its rise as a formal dessert is generally traced to early nineteenth-century French cooking, and by the time of this book it was a fixture in American cookery instruction. The ribbon version belongs to a period fascination with layered, molded, sliceable desserts, when a clean cross-section of pink, green and white was part of the appeal. Lowney's Cook Book came from the Walter M. Lowney Company of Boston, a chocolate manufacturer, and like other company-sponsored cookbooks of the era it surrounded its house product with a full general repertoire of household recipes, molded creams among them.