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Spanish Cream
2 cups scalded milk 4 egg yolks 1/4 cup sugar 2 tablespoons granulated gelatine 1/4 cup cold water 1 teaspoon vanilla extract 1 pint cream Pour scalded milk very slowly over the egg yolks and sugar which have been mixed together. Put into double boiler and cook slowly until thick and smooth. Pour over gelatine which has been soaking in 1/4 cup of cold water. Chill, add vanilla and beat with egg whip until thick. Add the cream which has been whipped and chill in molds.
A moulded gelatin custard from the invalid-cookery chapter, where soft, cold, bland and easily swallowed were the design brief. Almost everything hinges on catching the gelatin at the right stage of setting.
- The hinge: the syrupy stage"Chill... and beat with egg whip until thick" means cooling the custard until it has the body of raw egg white, then whipping it. Fold in the cream at that point; too soon and the whipped cream deflates into soup, too late and you get rubbery lumps that will not blend.
- Gelatine quantityTwo tablespoons of granulated gelatine is close to three modern envelopes (roughly three-quarters of an ounce), setting some four to four and a half cups of custard and cream. That gives a firm, sliceable mould that unmoulds cleanly; for a spoonable, quivering cream, one and a half tablespoons is nearer current taste.
- Soaking the gelatineSprinkle it over the cold water and leave five minutes until it swells and goes opaque before the hot custard goes on. Dumping dry granules into hot liquid gives permanent gritty threads.
- Cooking the custardIn the double boiler, take it to 170-180F, when it coats the back of a spoon and a drawn finger leaves a clean track. Above about 185F the yolks curdle; strain immediately if that happens.
- Scalded milkHeated to just below boiling, around 180F, with bubbles at the rim. Tempering means adding it to the yolks in a thin stream while whisking constantly.
- A pint of creamTwo cups, whipped to soft peaks, not stiff. Heavy or whipping cream both work; period "cream" was often thinner than today's heavy cream, so soft peaks keep the texture closer to the original.
- Moulding and unmouldingRinse the moulds in cold water first, or oil them very lightly. Chill at least four hours, then dip the mould in warm water for a few seconds and invert.
- YieldRoughly six cups of finished cream once the whipped cream is folded in, eight to ten servings, or more in small individual moulds.
Spanish cream is a gelatin-set egg custard that turns up in British and American cookery from the later nineteenth century onward; the "Spanish" appears to be decorative rather than geographical, in the same vein as Spanish buns, and no firm origin has been documented. Many versions fold in the stiffly beaten whites, which rise as the mould sets and give the two-layer effect the dish is remembered for; this one uses whipped cream instead, producing something closer to a bavarian. Its place in the invalid cookery chapter is telling: granulated gelatine, sold in packets by the 1890s and far easier than boiling down calf's foot, made cold, soft, nourishing dishes cheap and quick, and a milk-and-egg cream that needed no chewing was common sickroom fare.