Cream Eggs
INGREDIENTS for dish for 6 persons. -7 eggs, pint of milk, pint of cream, 1/4 lb. of loaf sugar, 2 lemons, 1 oz. of gelatine, a round stale sponge cake, a few strips of angelica and candied citron, 2 glasses of liqueur, a few pistachio nuts.
AVERAGE COST, not including the eggs not used, which can serve for another dish, 3s. 6d.
Break a small piece off the end of the shell of each egg and take out the contents.
Make a lemon cream as directed in recipe for same, and fill the egg-shells with it, putting them upright on the unbroken ends to cool. Scoop out the centre of the spongecake after ter the fashion of a nest, pour over it the liqueur, and stick it with small pieces of the citron and angelica to look like wings. Chop the nuts finely, and scatter over and inside the nest, and when the eggs are cold shell them and lay them in the nest.
This is a very pretty supper dish, and it may be varied by cutting the cream eggs CREAM, ITALIAN. in half lengthways, scooping out as much as the yolk would occupy from each half, and filling the cavity with apricot preserve to look like the yolk.
SEASONABLE at any time.
A Victorian trompe-l'oeil supper dish: lemon cream set in blown eggshells and turned out into a hollowed sponge cake nest. Nothing here is difficult, but the shells and the gelatine both need modern handling.
- The hinge: the shellsThe shells are the moulds, and they go straight against a food you will not cook again. Blow them out, rinse, then boil the empty shells in water for a few minutes and dry them before filling; raw shell exterior is where Salmonella lives. Stand them upright in an egg carton or a bowl of rice to set.
- Ambiguous liquid quantitiesThe milk and cream are each given simply as "pint", with no fraction, which looks like a fraction lost in transcription rather than a true quantity. Treat the amounts as unresolved and follow the proportions of whatever lemon cream recipe you use.
- GelatineVictorian gelatine varied a good deal in strength and is generally reckoned weaker than modern powder, so 1 oz should not be taken at face value. As a working rule with today's product, about 1/4 oz (roughly one 7 g envelope) per pint of liquid gives a cream firm enough to unmould from a shell without being rubbery.
- Loaf sugarLoaf sugar was refined sugar broken from a cone and crushed as needed. Ordinary granulated sugar, 1/4 lb, is the direct replacement.
- Angelica and citronCandied angelica stems are still sold by cake-decorating suppliers; candied citron peel by Italian grocers around Christmas. Candied lemon or lime peel stands in for the citron, and thin strips of candied peel dyed green for the angelica.
- The liqueurTwo glasses means two small wine glasses, roughly 4 fl oz total, poured over a stale sponge. Maraschino, kirsch or an orange liqueur suits the lemon cream; a fresh cake will go to paste, so let it dry out first.
- The seven eggsOnly the shells are wanted. Keep the whites and yolks covered in the refrigerator and use them within a day or two, as the note about "eggs not used" intends.
- Yield and servingSix portions, assembled at the last moment. The nest will not hold up once the liqueur soaks through, so keep it cold and bring it to the table whole before cutting.
Moulded creams shaped to look like something else were a staple of the Victorian supper table, where the point of a dish was as much display as flavour, and the cook's skill was judged by the illusion. Filling emptied eggshells with a set cream is an old confectioner's trick, recorded well before Beeton's time and often revived at Easter, when the nest of sponge and chopped pistachio made the joke plain. The variation at the end, halving the eggs and dropping apricot preserve into the hollow to imitate a yolk, is the same conceit turned inside out. Angelica, citron and pistachio were the standard decorating trio of the period: all three keep indefinitely, which is why they appear in so many dishes marked seasonable at any time.