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Brandy
} 1/4 cup each 1 teaspoon vanilla Seed raisins, add brandy, and cook in double boiler until raisins are soft. Make a custard of cream, sugar, egg yolks and salt. Remove from range, add gelatine soaked in cold water. Strain, cool slightly, add flavorings, stir until mixture thickens, then add raisins. Mould and chill. Remove from mould, and garnish with Sauterne Jelly (colored violet), cut in cubes, and fresh violets.
The ingredient list has been mangled in transcription — only a fragment of it survives ("1/4 cup each" of something, and a teaspoon of vanilla). The method, however, is a complete Bavarian cream, and reads clearly enough to follow if you supply proportions from a modern gelatine custard.
- The missing quantitiesThe original list is lost apart from "1/4 cup each" and the vanilla, so the amounts of cream, sugar, yolks, gelatine, raisins and brandy cannot be recovered from this page. Any figures given here would be invention; work from a Bavarian cream recipe whose proportions you trust and treat this text as the method.
- GelatinePeriod recipes call simply for gelatine soaked in cold water; granulated gelatine was widely sold by this date, though sheet gelatine was also used. Modern granulated needs about five minutes to soften; period directions often specify longer. It goes into the custard off the heat, as prolonged boiling can weaken the set.
- The hinge: cook the custard, do not scramble itThe custard goes to about 175–180F, thick enough to coat a spoon, and no further. Straining after the gelatine goes in is the insurance policy, and worth doing even if the custard looks perfect.
- "Stir until mixture thickens"This is the step people skip. The custard must be cooled and stirred to the consistency of unbeaten egg white before the raisins go in, or the fruit sinks to what will become the top of the unmoulded dessert.
- Seeding raisinsRaisins were often sold with the seeds still in, which is why the recipe says to seed them; seedless varieties were also available by this date. Modern seedless raisins skip the work; they will soften in brandy over simmering water in ten to fifteen minutes.
- Double boilerA heatproof bowl over a pan of barely simmering water does the same job. "Remove from range" simply means take it off the stove.
- Sauterne jelly, coloured violetA sweet-wine gelatine, set firm in a shallow pan and cut into cubes. The violet tint would have come from a colouring; it can be left out with no loss but the period look.
- Fresh violetsViolet flowers (Viola odorata) are edible and were a standard garnish. Use untreated, unsprayed flowers only, and note that African violets are a different plant entirely and not for eating.
- Moulding and yieldRinse the mould with cold water, or oil it very lightly, and chill at least four hours — overnight is better. A quart mould of Bavarian cream serves six to eight.
This is a gelatine-set custard cream of the kind usually called a Bavarian cream, though as printed the method contains no whipped cream folded in. The name is generally traced to French kitchen usage — crème bavaroise — rather than to any documented Bavarian original. What dates this particular version is the finishing: a wine jelly cut in cubes, tinted violet, and banked with real violets around the turned-out cream. A moulded dessert could be made well in advance and brought to table already composed.