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Geneva Lake Cakes
Device for showing fine icing work that is lost on large pieces. Make 2 jelly cakes of 3 or 4 layers each and of diameter as broad as the largest cake stands will hold, and cut out the inside of all but the bottom layer of the cakes, making a basin surrounded by a wall. Spread the inside with some kind of jam to hide the cake and then fill them to the brim with the clearest jelly, amber color for one and light red for the other. Ice over the top surrounding rim of cake.
The jelly when poured in must be just at the point of beginning to set. If too firm its transparency will be destroyed, and if too thin it may soak into the cakes.
On the glassy surface of these lakes may be placed white swans of the finest icing, water lilies, boats, gondolas, arbors set on islands, trees, temples, fountains, all of the smallest practicable size. Every thread of the finest icing shows plainly on the surface of these jelly charlottes, and besides they are very good to eat.
This is a showpiece rather than a formula: no quantities are given, because the cook is expected to supply their own layer cake, jam and jelly. The whole thing hinges on the temperature of the jelly at the moment you pour it.
- The hinge: pour at the syrupy stageCool the gelatin until it is thick and just beginning to cling to the side of the bowl but still pours in a sheet, then get it in fast. Fully set jelly re-melted and poured hot will soak straight into the crumb; jelly cooled too far breaks up and loses the glassy clarity the whole device depends on. Chill the assembled cake shell first so the jelly sets on contact with the walls.
- "Jelly cake" is not jamIn nineteenth-century American usage a jelly cake is a plain sponge or butter layer cake with fruit jelly spread between the layers. The clear "jelly" poured into the basin is a gelatin jelly; in Whitehead's era that would have meant sheet gelatin, isinglass or calf's-foot stock. Sheet or powdered gelatin gives the same result, set firm enough to hold a piped swan without wobbling.
- Sealing the crumbThe recipe's stated reason for the jam is to hide the cake beneath the clear jelly, and a thin layer will also help keep the jelly from wicking into the cut crumb and clouding. Brush it on warm and thin, right up over the inner face of the wall, and let it tack up before pouring.
- Size and vessel"as broad as the largest cake stands will hold" means the widest round you can support and serve, not a stated measurement. Leave a floor of one uncut layer, as the recipe directs, and build the wall from the layers above it; a springform ring or a collar of parchment around the outside is useful insurance against a seeping seam.
- The colorsThe recipe asks only for amber and light red and names no colouring. Period kitchens had caramel, sherry or Madeira for amber tones and cochineal or a fruit juice such as currant for red. Modern food coloring works, but a spoonful of caramel or a splash of wine gives the amber depth without muddying it. Strain the jelly through a damp cloth if you want true transparency.
- The icing ornamentsSwans, lilies and gondolas are piped in royal icing on parchment or a lightly oiled surface and left to dry hard, ideally overnight. Set them onto the jelly only after it is fully firm; anything placed on soft jelly sinks and the fine threads dissolve at the base.
- Holding and servingThis is a refrigerator dessert once assembled and should not sit in a warm room. The recipe gives no yield, but two cakes of the largest diameter you can manage are meant for a full table; cut with a thin knife dipped in hot water so the jelly parts cleanly rather than tearing the icing work.
The American Pastry Cook belongs to Jessup Whitehead, a Chicago hotel cook and prolific trade writer of the 1880s and 90s, and this entry is aimed squarely at his intended reader: the professional confectioner who must send out a banquet centerpiece that photographs well from across a dining room. Whitehead's stated problem is a real one for the trade, that delicate piped work vanishes against a large expanse of ornamented cake, and his solution borrows the logic of the Victorian pièce montée: an edible landscape in miniature, complete with temples, arbors and swans. The name most likely nods to Lake Geneva in Wisconsin, which by the 1880s was the summer resort of choice for Chicago's wealthy and would have meant something immediate to the hotel clientele Whitehead cooked for, though Lac Léman in Switzerland carried the same associations of gentility. The closing remark that these charlottes "are very good to eat" is characteristic of him, and worth noting: much showpiece confectionery of the period was built on gum paste and pastillage that no one was expected to touch.