Italian Cream
INGREDIENTS for 1½ pint mould. pint of milk, pint of cream, sugar to taste, 1 oz. of isinglass or gelatine, 1 lemon, the yolks of 3 eggs.
AVERAGE COST, 1s. 8d.
Put the cream and milk into a saucepan, with sugar to sweeten, and the lemon-rind.
Boil until the milk is well flavoured, then strain it into a basin and add the beaten yolks of eggs. Put this mixture into a jug, place the jug in a saucepan of boiling water over the fire and stir the contents until they thicken, but do not allow them to boil. Take the cream off the fire, stir in the lemon-juice and isinglass, which should be melted, and whipped well; fill mould, place it in ice if at hand, and, when set, turn it out on a dish, and garnish as taste may dictate. The mixture may be whipped and drained, and then put into small glasses, when this mode of serving is preferred.
TIME.-From 5 to 8 minutes to stir the mixture in the jug.
SEASONABLE at any time.
A lemon-scented gelatine custard set in a mould — essentially a Victorian panna cotta with egg yolks. Two things decide whether it works: the custard must thicken without boiling, and the lemon juice must go in after the eggs have set into a custard, not before.
- The missing fractionsAs printed, "pint of milk, pint of cream" gives two pints of liquid for a 1½-pint mould; the fractions have evidently dropped out in setting. Read it as ½ pint milk and ½ pint cream (about 1¼ cups of each, since an imperial pint is 20 fl oz).
- Isinglass and gelatineIsinglass is dried fish swim bladder, sturgeon being the prized source, sold in sheets and no longer a kitchen item; gelatine is the direct substitute the recipe already allows. Period setting agents were not standardised in strength, so treat the ounce as a guide rather than a measure: with today's powdered gelatine, about ½ oz (roughly 4 tsp, or 3 sheets of leaf per cup of liquid) gives a mould that unturns cleanly without being rubbery.
- "Melted" gelatineBloom powdered gelatine in a few tablespoons of cold water for five minutes, then warm it until clear. Stir it into the custard while the custard is still hot, or it will set in threads.
- The custard temperatureThe jug in a pan of boiling water is a bain-marie. Stir to about 175F/80C — thick enough to coat a spoon. Above 185F/85C the yolks scramble, and the recipe's warning not to boil is the hinge of the whole dish.
- Lemon juice last, and off the heatAcid added to hot dairy curdles it. Take the pan off the fire, let the custard drop below simmering, and stir the juice in slowly. Straining afterwards costs nothing and saves an uneven set.
- "Whipped well"The phrase is ambiguous as printed and could attach to the melted isinglass, but read as whisking the mixture as it cools it aerates before setting, giving a result lighter than a plain moulded cream. Whisk over a bowl of iced water until it thickens to the texture of pouring cream, then pour into the mould at once.
- Setting and unmouldingIce was a luxury in a mid-Victorian household, which is why the recipe says "if at hand"; four hours in the refrigerator does the same work. Dip the mould briefly in warm water and invert onto a wetted plate so the cream can be slid into position.
- YieldA 1½-pint mould serves six, or fills six small glasses if you take the alternative serving suggestion.
Mrs Beeton's book carries several "Italian" creams, and the name in mid-Victorian English cookery usually signalled a rich moulded cream rather than any documented Italian original — the same loose geography that gave English kitchens Dutch sauce and Spanish cream. What is genuinely of its moment is the setting agent: isinglass, imported from Russian sturgeon and sold in several forms, was the standard household gelatine until refined commercial gelatines displaced it in the later nineteenth century, and Beeton's habit of offering "isinglass or gelatine" catches exactly the years of the changeover. The average cost of 1s 8d is also worth reading — a substantial sum for a pudding, reflecting the price of cream and eggs.