Ginger Cream
INGREDIENTS for good-sized dish. The yolks of 4 eggs, pint of cream, pint of milk, 3 oz. of preserved ginger, 2 dessertspoonfuls of syrup, sifted sugar to taste, 1 oz. of isinglass or gelatine.
AVERAGE COST, 2s.
Slice the ginger finely; put it into a basin with the syrup, the well-beaten yolks of eggs, and the cream; mix these ingredients well together, and stir them over the fire for about 10 minutes, or until the mixture thickens; then take it off the fire, whisk till nearly cold, sweeten to taste, add the isinglass, which should be melted and gether; butter a basin, and put the mixture in dry; tie a cloth over, and boil 3 hours.
TIME.-3 hours.
SEASONABLE at any time.
The text as printed has been mangled somewhere between the compositor and the page: a line drops out mid-sentence ("melted and gether"), the pint of milk in the ingredient list never appears in the method, and the closing instructions — butter a basin, tie a cloth over, boil 3 hours — belong to a boiled pudding, not to a moulded cream. Read the method for its intent and ignore the tail.
- The hinge: it is a set custard, not a boiled puddingA ginger cream is a stirred custard stiffened with isinglass or gelatine, poured into a wetted mould and chilled until firm. Boiling it in a cloth for three hours, as the last clause says, would scramble the eggs and destroy the set. Those words are stray type from another entry.
- Missing milkThe ingredients call for a pint of cream and a pint of milk; the surviving method mentions only cream. Scald the milk with the ginger and syrup and use it as part of the custard base — a full pint of cream with four yolks and 1 oz of gelatine would set very stiff on its own.
- Imperial pintsBeeton's pint is 20 fl oz, so each "pint" is 2 1/2 US cups. Two pints of liquid to four yolks is a light custard leaning on the gelatine for structure.
- Isinglass and gelatine are not interchangeable by weightIsinglass is dried fish swim-bladder collagen and is no longer a domestic ingredient. One ounce of modern powdered gelatine (about 4 sachets, 28 g) will set four to five cups very firmly — a turn-out-of-the-mould set. For a spoonable cream use half that.
- Preserved ginger and its syrupThis means stem ginger candied in heavy syrup, sold in jars; the two dessertspoonfuls of syrup come from the same jar. Drained crystallised ginger will work but you will need to make up the syrup with sugar and water. Fresh root ginger is not a substitute here — it is far hotter and adds no sweetness.
- "Stir over the fire until the mixture thickens"Ten minutes is a guide, not a rule. Cook over a low heat or a bain-marie to 175–180F (80–82C), when the custard coats the back of a spoon; above 185F the yolks curdle. Add the melted gelatine to the warm custard, not the cold, or it will set in threads.
- Whisking till nearly coldThis aerates the custard and stops a skin forming; note that the gelatine goes in afterwards, once the mixture is nearly cold. Sweeten at this stage, as the ginger syrup has already done part of the work.
- Yield and servingTwo imperial pints of liquid comes to about 1 1/4 US quarts, enough for eight to ten. Chill at least four hours, six for a mould you intend to turn out; dip the mould briefly in hot water to release it.
Moulded creams were the backbone of the Victorian sweet course: a stirred custard, a setting agent and a flavouring, turned out of a copper or earthenware mould and served cold. The setting agent here is isinglass, made from the dried swim bladders of sturgeon and other fish, which was the standard household jelly-stiffener until commercially sheeted and powdered gelatine displaced it in the later nineteenth century — Beeton's books routinely offer the two as alternatives, which suggests both were in use side by side. The ginger itself came from China, shipped in stoneware jars of syrup and generally sold as Canton or preserved ginger; its steady availability through the year is why the recipe is marked "seasonable at any time", a note that meant something real in a kitchen otherwise governed by what was ripe. The garbled state of this particular entry is a reminder that Beeton's works were reset and reprinted many times, by many hands, long after the death of Isabella Beeton in 1865, and errors accumulated with each edition.