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Strawberry Bavarian Cream
2 tablespoons granulated gelatine cup cold water cup boiling water ½ cup sugar 1 pint fresh strawberry juice 24 whole strawberries whip from one pint of cream Soak gelatine in cold water, dissolve in boiling water. Add fruit juice and sugar; stir until mixture begins to thicken. Cut and fold in the whip from the cream.
Line a mold with halves of strawberries; pour in cream mixture. Chill; garnish with beaten cream and strawberries, and serve.
A straightforward gelatine bavarois, but the printed measures for the water have dropped out of the text and the cream instruction assumes a technique that has fallen out of use. Both need sorting before you begin.
- The missing water amountsThe original reads "cup cold water" and "cup boiling water" with the fractions lost in printing, so the quantities are genuinely unrecoverable from the page. Comparable recipes of the period generally fall somewhere between 1/4 and 1/2 cup cold water to soften and about 1/2 cup boiling to dissolve; anything much more will slacken a mixture that already carries a pint of juice.
- Gelatine strengthTwo tablespoons of granulated gelatine is six teaspoons, closer to two and a half or three envelopes of modern powdered gelatine, roughly 18 g. Old granulated gelatine was less consistently standardized, so if you want a spoonable cream rather than a firm sliceable one, err toward the lower side.
- "The whip from one pint of cream"This means the stiff foam skimmed off the top as thin cream was beaten, not the whole beaten volume. With modern heavy cream, whip a pint to soft peaks and use it all; the result is a little richer than intended but folds in cleanly.
- A pint of strawberry juiceExpect to crush and strain roughly 2 to 2 1/2 lb of ripe berries for a pint of juice. Do not press hard through the sieve or the pulp clouds the set. Taste the juice before committing to the half cup of sugar.
- The hinge: fold at the right momentThe gelatine mixture must be cold and just beginning to thicken to the consistency of raw egg white before the cream goes in. Fold too early and the cream floats to the top as a separate layer; too late and you get rubbery lumps that will not disperse.
- Lining the moldHalved berries pressed cut-side against a chilled, lightly oiled or water-rinsed mold will stay put once the first spoonfuls of cream set around them. Work quickly and chill the lined mold before filling.
- Chilling and unmoldingAllow at least 4 hours, or overnight for a large mold. Dip the mold briefly in warm water and invert onto a cold plate.
- YieldA 1 1/2 to 2 quart mold, serving 8 to 10. Best eaten the day it is made, as the raw fruit juice weeps after a day.
Bavarian cream, from the French bavarois, is a custard or fruit base set with gelatine and lightened with whipped cream; the name is traditionally linked to French chefs working for Bavarian nobility in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, though the attribution is repeated more often than it is documented. What made it a fixture of American cookbooks around 1900 was not aristocratic association but the arrival of reliable packaged granulated gelatine, which replaced the tedious business of boiling down calves' feet and put molded desserts within reach of any household cook. Lowney's was published by the Walter M. Lowney Company, a Boston chocolate manufacturer, and it surrounded its chocolate recipes with a full complement of ordinary desserts ered as though inviting a permanent place on the kitchen shelf. This fruit version, using nothing but juice, sugar, gelatine and cream, is the plainest form of the dish, and it depends entirely on the strawberries being at their peak.