Home › Frozen Desserts › Delicious Charlotte Russe
Delicious Charlotte Russe
6 yolks. 1 cup sugar. 1/2 box granulated gelatin. Served in macaroon cups. 1 pint sweet milk. 1 pint double cream, whipped.
Soak gelatin in one-fourth cup cold milk, beat yolks very light, add sugar and beat well. Put milk in double boiler, and when hot add sugar and yolks gradually, then stir in gelatin, cook until thick, stirring all the time. When taken from fire, strain and whip until cool. Fold in whipped cream. Flavor with two tablespoons of sherry, one teaspoon vanilla. Line mold with lady fingers or macaroons and pack in ice to congeal. Put in mold without cake and when ready serve in cups made of macaroons. It will require five to each cup, one for bottom and four around, fastened together with candy sirup.
A cooked custard lightened with gelatin and whipped cream — a Bavarian cream in all but name. The instructions assume a cook who already knows how to handle both, so a few gaps are worth filling.
- Half a box of gelatinBoxes of granulated gelatin of the period are commonly reckoned at about an ounce divided into quarter-ounce envelopes, which would make half a box roughly 2 scant tablespoons; box sizes were not standard, however, and some period sources treat half a box as a full ounce. At the lower figure it is already a firm set for 1 pint milk plus 1 pint whipped cream; use the smaller side of the measure if you want it spoonable rather than sliceable.
- The hinge: custard temperature"Cook until thick" means 170-175F, thick enough to coat a spoon. The double boiler is there for a reason — direct heat or a boil will scramble the yolks, and no amount of straining fixes a grainy custard.
- Sugar, mentioned twiceThe sugar goes into the yolks, as the second sentence says. The later instruction to "add sugar and yolks" to the hot milk means the yolk-sugar mixture, not a second cup.
- Whip until coolWhisk the strained custard over a bowl of ice water. It must be cool but not yet setting when the cream goes in, or the gelatin will seize into threads and the cream will deflate.
- Double creamHeavy or whipping cream at 36 percent or more. Whip to soft peaks only — it firms further as the gelatin sets, and stiffly whipped cream folds in as lumps.
- "Pack in ice to congeal"Congeal here means set, not freeze. A mold packed in cracked ice will set in a couple of hours; a refrigerator shelf for four to six hours does the same work today.
- MacaroonsThe chewy almond or coconut drop macaroon of the period, not the modern French macaron shell, which is too fragile to build a cup from. Five per cup, as the recipe says -- one for the bottom, four around -- glued with a thick boiled sugar syrup used while it is still tacky.
- YieldRoughly a quart and a half of cream, enough for eight to ten of the macaroon cups, or a 1 1/2-quart mold lined with ladyfingers.
The charlotte russe is generally traced to Antonin Carême, who is said to have renamed his charlotte à la parisienne in honor of a Russian patron; unlike the older baked apple charlotte it is not cooked in its crust but built cold in a ladyfinger-lined mold around a gelatin-set Bavarian cream. Setting a mold by packing it in cracked ice, as here, used the same equipment a household used for ice cream. The macaroon cups are the more revealing detail: individual service in an edible container was prized as a mark of a careful hostess in the period.