Noyeau Cream
INGREDIENTS for quart mould.-1½ oz. of isinglass or gelatine, the juice of 2 lemons, noyeau and pounded sugar to taste, 1 pint of milk, 1/2 pint of cream. AVERAGE COST, 2s. 6d.
Dissolve the isinglass or gelatine in a little boiling water, add the lemon-juice and strain this to the cream, putting in sufficient noyeau and sugar to flavour, and sweeten the mixture nicely; whip the cream well, put it into an oiled mould, and set the mould in ice or in a cool place; turn it out and garnish the dish to taste.
TIME.-Altogether 1/2 hour.
SEASONABLE at any time.
A Victorian moulded cream, essentially a lemon-almond blancmange set with gelatine. The printed text has lost several fractions in transcription, so read the quantities with care.
- Gelatine quantityThe printed page gives 1½ oz. of isinglass or gelatine for a quart mould, as our text now reads. In modern terms that is roughly 15-20 g of powdered gelatine, or the leaf equivalent, depending on how firmly you want it to stand once turned out.
- IsinglassIsinglass is a collagen setting agent made from the dried swim bladders of sturgeon and other fish. It was the prestige gelling agent of the period and is essentially unobtainable for cooking now; leaf or powdered gelatine is the direct substitute.
- NoyeauNoyeau (usually spelled noyau today) is a liqueur flavoured with stone-fruit kernels — peach, apricot or bitter almond — sold now as crème de noyaux. Commercial bottlings are safe; do not attempt to steep your own kernels. Amaretto is the closest widely available stand-in. "To taste" here means somewhere around 3-4 tablespoons for a quart mould.
- The milk is a leftoverA pint of milk appears in the ingredient list and is never mentioned again in the method, which speaks only of cream. Either fold it in with the cream before whipping — in which case the mixture will not whip to any volume and you get a soft, pourable set — or ignore it and use cream alone for the firmer, richer result the whipping instruction implies.
- Temperature is the hingeDissolved gelatine poured hot into cold cream sets in threads. Let it cool to blood heat, and add the acidic lemon juice to the gelatine rather than directly to the cream, or the cream may curdle. Whip the cream to soft peaks first, then fold the cooled gelatine mixture through quickly and mould at once.
- Oiling the mouldUse a flavourless oil, wiped on with kitchen paper so only the faintest film remains. To turn out, dip the mould for a few seconds in hot water and invert onto a wetted plate, which lets you slide the cream into position.
- "Time. Altogether hour"Another lost fraction; the figure cannot be recovered from this text. The setting itself needs four hours in the refrigerator, and overnight is better for a mould that will hold its shape on the table.
- YieldA quart mould serves eight to ten as a dessert. "Garnish the dish to taste" is left open; crystallised fruit, ratafia biscuits or a ring of whipped cream would all suit.
Noyau is a liqueur flavoured with the kernels inside stone fruits, which carry the same bitter-almond note as almonds themselves; the best-known versions came from Martinique and were prized in Britain from the late eighteenth century onward. Set creams of this kind — blancmanges, Bavarians, Charlottes and their many flavoured cousins — were the backbone of the Victorian dessert course, because a moulded shape that stood up on a dish demonstrated both a cook's skill and a household's access to ice. Beeton's book is full of them, each differing only in the flavouring: ratafia, coffee, vanilla, ginger, or, as here, noyeau. The instruction to set the mould "in ice or in a cool place" is a reminder that domestic refrigeration was not yet a given, and that the ice trade, which shipped lake ice from Norway and North America into British icehouses, was what made this sort of dessert reliable at all.