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Ginger Cream
1/4 box gelatine or. 1 tablespoon granulated gelatine ¼ cup cold water 1 cup milk Yolks 2 eggs 1/4 cup sugar Few grains salt 1 tablespoon wine 1/2 tablespoon brandy 2 tablespoons ginger syrup ¼ cup Canton ginger, cut in pieces Whip from 2½ cups cream Soak gelatine, and add to custard made of milk, eggs, sugar, and salt. Strain, chill in pan of ice-water, add fiavorings, and when it begins to thicken fold in whip from cream.
A gelatine-set custard lightened with whipped cream and flavored with preserved ginger and its syrup. The technique is straightforward; the vocabulary is what dates it.
- "Whip from 2½ cups cream"Older books beat cream in a bowl and skimmed off the stiff froth as it formed, leaving thin cream behind, so the quantity of cream called for yields a smaller amount of usable whip. With modern high-fat heavy cream, whip less cream than the stated amount to soft peaks and use all of it.
- GelatineOne tablespoon of granulated gelatine is slightly more than a standard ¼-ounce envelope (about 2¼ teaspoons). Soak it in the cold water for five minutes until it swells before stirring it into the hot custard, and make sure it fully dissolves or the cream will set in threads.
- The custardScald the milk, temper it into the yolks with the sugar and salt, and cook over low heat or a double boiler to about 170–180°F, until it coats a spoon; past that the yolks curdle. The recipe's instruction to strain is routine for a stirred custard.
- Canton gingerPreserved stem ginger in heavy syrup, sold in jars and often labeled stem ginger or ginger in syrup. The syrup called for in the recipe is the liquid from the same jar; crystallized ginger is not a substitute without adding sugar syrup separately.
- Timing the foldThe hinge of the dish. Chill over ice-water and stir until the mixture mounds slightly on the spoon, then fold in the cream at once. Too warm and the cream melts into a thin layer; too cold and the custard sets in lumps you cannot smooth out.
- Wine and brandyThe recipe specifies only "wine"; a fortified wine such as sherry or Madeira suits the dish. Add spirits after the custard is cool, as the recipe directs, since alcohol drives off flavor in a hot mixture.
- Setting and yieldTurn into a wet mold or individual glasses and refrigerate at least four hours, preferably overnight. The recipe states no yield.
Gelatine desserts of this kind — a stirred custard, a bloomed gelatine, a fold of whipped cream — were the backbone of the American cold-dessert chapter around 1900, made practical by granulated gelatine, which replaced the laborious business of boiling down calf's foot or isinglass. Canton ginger takes its name from the port through which Chinese preserved ginger reached Western markets; by the late nineteenth century it was treated as a luxury flavoring. The pairing of ginger with a sherry-and-brandy custard belongs to the same taste that produced tipsy cake and wine jelly: cold, molded, faintly alcoholic, and served at the end of a formal dinner.