Swiss Cream
INGREDIENTS for dish for 6 persons. lb. of macaroons or 6 small sponge-cakes, sherry, 1 pint of cream, 5 oz. of lump sugar, 2 large tablespoonfuls of arrowroot, the rind of 1 lemon, the juice of 1/2 lemon, 3 tablespoonfuls of milk. AVERAGE COST, 2s. 6d.
Lay the macaroons or sponge-cakes in a glass dish, and pour over them as much Sherry as will cover them, or sufficient to soak them well. Put the cream into a lined saucepan, with the sugar and lemon-rind, until the cream is well flavoured, when take and let it remain by the side of the fire out the lemon-rind. Mix the arrowroot smoothly with the cold milk; add this to the cream, and let it boil gently for about 3 minutes, keeping it well stirred. Take it off the fire, stir till nearly cold, when add the lemon-juice, and pour the whole over the cakes. Garnish the cream with strips of angelica or candied citron, cut thin, or bright-coloured jelly or preserve. vanilla instead of lemon; when this flavourcream is exceedingly good, flavoured with , flavoured with the mixture poured over the dry cakes. ing is used the sherry may be omitted , and This rind; 5 minutes to boil the cream.
TIME.-About hour to infuse the lemon- SEASONABLE at any time.
Swiss Cream. (More Economical.) - INGREDIENTS for dish for 6 persons.-A few slices of stale sponge-cake, 2 glasses of orange wine, 1 pint of milk, 3 eggs, 1/4 lb. of sugar, flavouring of lemon or vanilla. AVER- SEASONABLE from Easter to Michaelmas. AGE COST, 1s.
Sweetbreads, Another Way to Dress. (An Entrée.) - INGREDIENTS for dish for 5 or 6 persons.-2 sweetbreads, egg Slice the cake into a glass dish and let it soak in the orange wine. Make a custard with the milk and eggs, flavouring it with vanilla or lemon. When cold pour it over the sponge-cake and garnish with a few SYLLABUB.
SYRUP FOR JELLIES. crystallised cherries or a little red currant syllabub into glasses, and over the top of jelly.
SEASONABLE at any time.
Note. A plain tipsy cake may be made in the same way, and an improvement may be made by spreading the slices of sponge-cake with preserve.
Syllabub. INGREDIENTS for syllabub for 6 persons.-1 pint of sherry or white wine, 1/2 grated nutmeg, sugar to taste, 1½ pint of milk. AVERAGE COST, 1s. 9d.
Put the wine into a bowl, with the grated nutmeg and plenty of nounded sugar, and milk into it the above proportion of milk from the cow. Clouted cream may be laid on the top, with pounded cinnamon or nutmeg and sugar; and a little brandy may be added to the wine before the milk is put in. In some counties, cider is substituted for the wine: when this is used, brandy must always be added. Warm milk ma be poured on from a spouted jug or teapot; may but it must be held very high.
SEASONABLE at any time.
A Victorian trifle in the arrowroot-thickened family: soaked cakes under a set cream. The whole thing hinges on when the lemon juice goes in.
- Add the acid coldThe lemon juice must go in after the cream has cooled to nearly room temperature, as stated. Stirred into hot cream it will curdle it, and no amount of beating will bring it back.
- Arrowroot, not flourTwo large tablespoonfuls is roughly 20-25 g, enough to set a pint of cream to a soft pouring custard. Slake it in the cold milk to a smooth slurry first, and give it the full three minutes of gentle boiling or it will taste raw and thin as it cools.
- Infusing the rindPare the lemon zest in strips with no white pith. The timing line is defective in this text (the fraction for the infusing time is missing); on a modern hob, heat the cream with sugar and rind to a bare simmer, cover, leave off the heat until well flavoured, then strain.
- Lined saucepanUsually a tin-lined copper pan rather than bare metal, which suited acid and dairy. Any modern stainless or enamelled pan does the job.
- Lump sugarFive ounces (about 140 g) of loaf sugar broken from a cone. Ordinary granulated or caster sugar is the same thing; the recipe is sweet by modern taste, and 100 g is ample.
- MacaroonsVictorian macaroons are crisp almond biscuits, not the soft coconut sort and not French macarons. Amaretti or hard almond biscuits behave correctly under sherry; small sponge-cakes are the stated alternative and soak faster.
- Quantity of pintAn imperial pint is 20 fl oz, so use 570 ml of cream. Single cream or a mix of single and double gives a set closer to the original than all double cream.
- Garnish and settingAngelica and candied citron are still sold at Christmas; strips of glacé cherry or a spoonful of red currant jelly do the same work. Chill at least three hours before serving so the arrowroot sets and the cake finishes absorbing the wine.
- YieldAs written it fills one glass dish for six. The vanilla variation noted in the text omits the sherry altogether and pours the cream over dry cake.
"Swiss cream" was one of a crowd of nineteenth-century English sweets built on the same principle as trifle — cake soaked in fortified wine, buried under something rich and cold — and the geographical name is often said to owe more to the Victorian habit of dressing up dishes with foreign labels than to anything Alpine, though that is guesswork rather than established fact. What distinguishes it from a trifle proper is the thickening: instead of eggs, the cream is set with arrowroot, a starch imported from the West Indies that became a fashionable invalid and nursery food in Britain and was prized because it thickened without the risk of curdling and left a clear, clean flavour. Mrs Beeton's book characteristically follows the full version with a cheaper one using milk, eggs and orange wine, and notes that the same assembly, spread with preserve, makes a plain tipsy cake — a reminder that these puddings were a family of variations on stale sponge rather than fixed compositions.