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Parisian Charlotte
Receipts and directions for making different colors of glaze or boiled icing were given in connection with white cases near the beginning of this book. Cut some thin sponge drops or sheets of sponge cake in squares and dip one side of them by means of a fork in the gaze and let them dry and harden. Have several colors. Line plain drum shaped molds with these colored squares checker-board fashion, dipping the edges in melted glaze or candy to make them stick. Then fill up the molds with any of the creams. When cold and set turn out and set on the table whole as directed for charlotte-russe.
Wanted--A Name. Is everything and all this country really running to pie? A Chicago lady tourist kindly wishing to do the writer a service described for him her way of making a "Charlotte-russe" that is highly esteemed among her circle of friends. It accordingly here appears in place. Bake 2 thin sheets of sponge cake on jelly cake pans and while they are still warm place them on soup plates and press them lightly to the shape. Fill one with whipped cream with gelatine in it. (Bavarian cream in effect) and place the other sheet of cake over it like a lid. This is convenient to cut. It can be covered with powdered sugar or with icing. It is good, excellent, but through some miserable prejudice or other we don't like to call it charlotte-russe. It is too much like pie.
Two constructions sit side by side here: a checkerboard charlotte built from glazed sponge squares, and a Chicago visitor's flattened sponge-and-gelatine version the author refuses to dignify with the name. Both are assembly jobs, and both depend on things the text assumes you already know from earlier chapters.
- The glaze is boiled icingThe text uses "glaze" and "boiled icing" more or less interchangeably, and says the receipts for tinting it were given earlier in connection with white cases. Any firm boiled or royal icing tinted in several colors will do the same work; it must set dry and hard so the squares can be handled without smearing.
- Drum-shaped moldsThat is a plain straight-sided charlotte mold or a deep tin can shape, flat-bottomed with no fluting, so the checkerboard reads as a continuous pattern. Line the sides with the squares first, using melted icing as mortar, and chill the shell before filling.
- Sponge drops and sheetsSponge drops are small piped sponge biscuits, closer to a ladyfinger than a cookie. Store-bought ladyfingers, trimmed square, substitute directly; a thin sheet of genoise or sponge cake cut into 1-inch squares works as well.
- "Any of the creams"The filling must be a set cream, not plain whipped cream, or the charlotte collapses when turned out. A Bavarian cream with about one envelope of powdered gelatine (roughly 2 1/2 teaspoons, 7 g) per pint of finished cream should hold its shape once unmolded.
- Gelatine handling in the second versionBloom the gelatine in cold water, dissolve it over gentle heat, then cool it to barely warm before streaming it into the whipped cream. Added hot it deflates the cream; added cold it sets in threads.
- Shaping the warm spongeThe soup-plate trick depends on the cake still being warm and flexible, as the recipe specifies; press it lightly into the plate and let it cool in the curve so it holds the shape.
- Setting timeGive either version at least four hours in the refrigerator, and overnight is better. To unmold the drum, wrap the outside briefly with a hot damp towel rather than dipping it, which would dull the icing.
- YieldDepending on the size of the mold and the pans, the drum will serve six to ten, and the two-sheet Chicago version, cut in wedges, something similar.
Charlotte russe is generally traced to Antonin Carême in the early nineteenth century: a ring of sponge fingers lining a mold, filled with bavarois, turned out and served cold. The "Parisian" variant here is a decorator's flourish on the same frame, trading the vertical ladyfinger palisade for a checkerboard of glazed squares. What makes the page worth reading is the aside. The author's complaint that the Chicago lady's flattened version is "too much like pie" reads as a defense of a French name against the American habit of pressing every sweet filling between two layers and calling it something grander. He prints her method anyway, and admits it is excellent, which tells you the argument was already lost.