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Maple Charlotte
One envelope of Minute gelatine, 1 cup of maple syrup, 1 cup milk, 1/2 cup chopped walnuts, 2 eggs, 1 tsp. vanilla. Heat milk and dissolve gelatine in 2 tbsp. hot milk, then add to remainder. Add beaten yolks of eggs and stir until just beginning to thicken. Remove from fire and stir in stiffly beaten whites of eggs. Add maple syrup and vanilla. When beginning to jell, stir in nut meats. If it curdles, beat with egg beater. Serve with whipped
— Mrs. C. W. Taft
cream. 1 cup coffee 1 cup cream 3 eggs Coffee Soufflé 1 tbsp. gelatine 1/4 cup of cold water 1/2 cup sugar Serve with whipped cream. Scald the coffee and cream in double boiler, soften gelatine in cold water and add to hot cream. Add beaten yolks of eggs and sugar; cook two minutes; cool. Add stiffly beaten whites and beat mixture in ice water until stiff. MRS. CHAS. PORTER.
Two separate desserts have been jumbled together by the typesetter, and the maple charlotte depends on raw egg white that is never heated at all. Notes below on reading the page and on why the method is a problem.
- The page is two recipes, not oneMrs. Taft's Maple Charlotte ends at "Serve with whipped cream." Everything from "1 cup coffee" onward belongs to Mrs. Porter's Coffee Souffle, whose ingredient list was set in columns and has collapsed into the running text. Read the coffee ingredients as a block: 1 cup coffee, 1 cup cream, 3 eggs, 1 tbsp gelatine, 1/4 cup cold water, 1/2 cup sugar.
- Why it is not safe as writtenThe beaten whites go in after the pan leaves the fire and are never brought to any temperature; the maple syrup and vanilla are cold additions and the mixture then only chills. Raw egg in a set, unheated dessert carries a risk of Salmonella, and nothing in this method inactivates it. The yolk custard is heated, but the whites are not, and they are the bulk of the aeration. Use a current recipe for gelatin charlottes.
- "One envelope of Minute gelatine"A branded granulated gelatin of the period, sold ready-measured in envelopes; roughly the tablespoon-scale quantity the second recipe calls for. It is unflavoured, not the sweetened dessert gelatin sold in similar packets today.
- "Remove from fire"Standard phrasing for a coal or gas range: take the pan off the heat.
- "If it curdles, beat with egg beater"An honest admission that the method is unstable; a warm egg custard stirred over heat can break, and the cook is told to beat it smooth again.
- Maple syrupHere this means real tapped syrup. The blended table syrups that later took the name are far sweeter relative to their maple content and were not what Mrs. Taft measured.
- YieldRoughly a quart of set mixture once the whites are folded in; probably about six servings.
A charlotte russe is a moulded cream set with gelatin, usually lined with sponge fingers, and in American cookbooks of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries the name drifted to mean almost any whipped gelatin cream, lining or not. Once packaged granulated gelatin became cheap and reliable in the 1890s, these desserts spread fast through community and church cookbooks: they needed no oven, could be made in the morning and left in the icebox, and stretched a small quantity of dairy across a table. The Philathea class that produced the book was a young women's Bible-study organisation, and its recipes carry contributors' names because the volume was sold as a fundraiser to a congregation that knew every cook on the list.