Roman Cream
1 quart of milk. 10 ounces of sugar. 1 1/2 ounces of gelatine--good weight. Piece of stick cinnamon. 1 cupful of thick cream. 12 yolks of eggs. 1 cupful of curacao, or Madeira wine.
Set the milk over the fire and put in a piece of thick cinnamon, the sugar and gelatine and stir till the gelatine is all dissolved. Beat the yolks light and pour the milk just about at the boiling point to them. Set on the fire again for a minute but do not let it boil. Strain into a freezer set in ice water. When nearly cold enough to set whip the cupful of cream and beat it in and add the curacao. This is a fine dusky yellow cream light and spongy, that falls apart in the saucers of its own weight.
The particular touch about all of these creams is the getting along with the smallest possible quantity of gelatine. They are quite another thing and are not really good when made firm and tough with it. The object of the gelatine is to give consistency enough to the milk to allow it to become spongy when beaten like whipped cream. This also necessitates the creams being served very cold, a point on which their excellence also greatly depends.
This is a Bavarian-style cream: a rich stirred custard set lightly with gelatine, then lightened with whipped cream and liqueur. Almost everything hinges on using far less gelatine than the original calls for.
- The gelatine is the whole problemAn ounce and a half of gelatine for a quart of milk will produce a rubbery block by modern standards. Nineteenth-century gelatine came in sheets and shreds of variable and unstandardised setting power, so the weight given cannot be read straight across to today's powder. For a quart of milk plus a cup of cream, start with about half an ounce (two 1/4-oz envelopes, or roughly 5 sheets depending on grade), which gives the spongy, barely-holding texture the author is arguing for.
- "Freezer" is not a freezerHe means the metal can of an ice-cream churn, or any deep metal vessel, set down in a bucket of ice and water. Nothing here is frozen; the ice bath simply chills the custard quickly and evenly so it can be beaten as it thickens.
- Custard temperature"Set on the fire again for a minute but do not let it boil" means cooking to 175-180F, stirring constantly, until the custard coats a spoon. Above about 185F the yolks curdle and no amount of straining will restore the texture.
- MeasuresA cupful is 8 fluid ounces. Ten ounces of sugar is a weight, about 1 1/2 cups granulated. "Thick cream" is heavy or whipping cream.
- Twelve yolksTwelve yolks to a quart of milk is a genuinely rich custard by any standard, and it is what gives the 'dusky yellow' colour. If your eggs are large, ten yolks will likely do the same work.
- Timing the whipped creamThe cream must go in when the custard is cold and just beginning to thicken at the edges, not before. Too early and it thins back into the custard; too late and you fold whipped cream into a set jelly and get lumps.
- The liqueurCuracao is still sold, dry white or orange; Madeira gives a nuttier, less sweet result. A full cup of either into a quart of custard is a lot of alcohol, which also slows the set. If you reduce the gelatine as suggested, consider reducing the liqueur to half a cup as well.
- Serving and yieldThis is meant to be spooned into individual saucers or coupes rather than turned out of a mould, and served very cold, straight from the refrigerator. It makes a large quantity -- upwards of a dozen small servings, and more once beaten light.
Roman cream belongs to the large family of moulded and spooned creams that dominated American hotel and restaurant dessert lists in the last decades of the nineteenth century, alongside Bavarian cream, Charlotte Russe and the various "velvet" and "snow" creams. The names were largely decorative and, it is often said, seldom indicated any real geographical origin; what distinguished one from another was usually the flavouring, here cinnamon-infused milk finished with curacao or Madeira. What makes the entry worth reading is the argument attached to it, which suggests that cooks of the period may have been leaning too heavily on gelatine, turning creams into firm sliceable jellies. Whitehead, writing for professional pastry cooks, is pushing back, insisting that the gelatine exists only to give the milk enough body to hold air when beaten, and that the finished cream should fall apart in the dish under its own weight.