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Cream Whips
Sweeten thin cream, flavor with vanilla, brandy, or wine, then whip; half fill frappé glasses with any preserve, pile on lightly the whip.
Sautéd Pears with Chocolate Sauce Pare four Bartlett pears, cut in fourths lengthwise, and sauté in butter until browned. Canned pears drained from their syrup may be used in place of fresh fruit. Arrange in serving dish and pour over Chocolate Sauce. Cook two ounces sweet chocolate, one tablespoon sugar, and one and one-fourth cups milk in double boiler five minutes; then add one teaspoon arrowroot mixed with one-fourth cup cream and a few grains salt, and cook ten minutes. Melt one and one-half tablespoons butter, add one-fourth cup powdered sugar, and cook until well caramelized, stirring constantly. Add to first mixture, and flavor with one-half teaspoon vanilla. Chill thoroughly.
Two short desserts run together on one page: a whipped-cream-and-preserve glass, and sautéd pears with a cooked chocolate-caramel sauce. Both are straightforward, but the cream and the caramel step need translating.
- "Thin cream" will not whipIn this period thin cream meant light or single cream, and it was whipped with a wire whisk over ice into a loose froth. Modern light cream and half-and-half whip poorly if at all; use heavy or whipping cream (36 percent or more) and stop at soft peaks so it still piles rather than stands.
- Frappé glassesSmall stemmed glasses, the same shape used for sherbet and ices. Any small stemmed or coupe glass works; the point is that the preserve shows through the side.
- Sweetening and flavouring the whipThe original gives no quantities. About 2 teaspoons sugar and 1/2 teaspoon vanilla, or a scant tablespoon of brandy or sweet wine, per cup of cream is in keeping. Add the liquor after the cream has begun to thicken or it will slow the whipping.
- Sweet chocolateSweet chocolate here means a sweetened dark eating chocolate of the German's type, noticeably sweeter than baking chocolate. Semisweet or bittersweet at around 50 to 60 percent cacao is the closest current stand-in; the sauce will be a little less sweet, which the caramel step compensates for.
- ArrowrootStill sold, and worth using here: it thickens clear and glossy and does not go pasty the way flour would. Cornstarch can replace it measure for measure, though the sauce will be slightly cloudier.
- The caramel is the hingeCooking butter with sugar to a caramel scorches quickly. Note also that the book's "powdered sugar" meant a fine granulated grade, not today's confectioners' sugar, which contains cornstarch and can make the caramel grainy. Granulated sugar behaves better; work over moderate heat, stir constantly, and pull it off the moment it is amber. Adding hot caramel to the warm chocolate base will spit, so add it slowly.
- PearsBartletts should be ripe but firm; a soft pear collapses in the pan. Sauté in a wide skillet over medium-high heat in a tablespoon or two of butter, cut side down, and leave them alone until browned. Canned pears, as the book says, must be drained and patted dry or they steam.
- YieldThe sauce makes about 1 1/2 cups, enough for the four pears with some left over; the pears serve four. Both the sauce and the whipped cream are best made the day they are eaten, though the sauce chills well for a day.
A cream whip was the plainest possible company dessert: preserve in the bottom of a glass, sweetened froth on top, no cooking at all. Before mechanical beaters it meant a good deal of arm work with a whisk. The chocolate sauce is the more instructive half of the page. Building a sauce on chocolate cooked in milk, thickening it with arrowroot rather than flour, and then folding in separately caramelised sugar is a fussy, French-influenced method typical of cooking-school teaching, where each step was meant to demonstrate a principle as much as to produce dinner. Arrowroot itself was a staple of the invalid-cookery shelf and turns up throughout books of this era for exactly the reason given here: it thickens without clouding or tasting of raw starch.