Home › Cold Desserts › Ivory Cream
Ivory Cream
¾ tablespoon granulated gelatine 1 tablespoon cold water 2 tablespoons boiling water 3 cups cream 4 tablespoons powdered sugar 3 tablespoons Madeira wine Soak gelatine in cold water, dissolve in boiling water, and add sugar and wine. Strain into a bowl, set in pan of icewater, and beat until mixture thickens slightly. Add to mixture whip from cream, and beat until mixture is thick enough to hold its shape. Mould and chill. Garnish with Sauterne Jelly. 2 cups thin cream Pudding à l'Adrea 1½ tablespoons granulated gelatine 2 tablespoons cold water ¾ cup sugar Whites 4 eggs 3 tablespoons Sherry 1½ tablespoons Sauterne Sauterne jelly mixture.
Make one-half recipe for Sauterne Jelly (see p. 420), allowing one and one-half tablespoons granulated gelatine. Color one-half green and one-half red. Fill sections of a fancy mould alternately with green and red jelly. In the green jelly mould pistachio nuts cut in quarters; in red jelly glacéd cherries cut in quarters.
Scald cream, add gelatine soaked in cold water, and sugar. When mixture begins to thicken add whites of eggs beaten until stiff. Set in pan of ice-water, and stir occasionally until mixture thickens; then add flavoring and turn into mould. Chill thoroughly and remove from mould. 1/3 cup raisins 1/4 cup brandy 2 cups cream 1/2 cup sugar Yolks 3 eggs ½ teaspoon salt
A plain wine-flavoured gelatine cream: a set custard-free mousse that depends entirely on getting the gelatine and the whipped cream to the same temperature and consistency before they meet.
- The gelatine quantityThe amount given for the Ivory Cream is not reliable as printed. For 3 cups of cream, about 1 tablespoon of granulated gelatine is the working proportion (a modern envelope is slightly less, roughly 2½ teaspoons or 7 g); the tablespoon of cold water for soaking and 2 tablespoons of boiling water to dissolve are consistent with that smaller scale.
- Granulated gelatineThis is unflavoured powdered gelatine, the same product sold in envelopes today. Sprinkle it over the cold water and let it stand until it swells and softens into a spongy mass before adding the boiling water; undissolved grains show up as gritty threads in the finished cream.
- "Whip from cream"The older method was to whip cream and skim the stiff froth off the top with a skimmer, returning the unwhipped liquid to be beaten again. With modern heavy cream you simply whip the full 3 cups to soft peaks and fold it in. Soft peaks, not stiff: the gelatine will do the rest of the setting.
- The hingeBeat the gelatine base over ice only until it thickens slightly and moves like unbeaten egg white. Fold the cream in at that moment. Too warm and the cream deflates into soup; too cool and the gelatine sets into rubbery flecks that no amount of beating will smooth out.
- MadeiraUse a drinking Madeira such as Sercial or Verdelho, not supermarket cooking Madeira, which is salted. Three tablespoons in three cups of cream is a background note rather than a strong flavour.
- Moulding and unmouldingRinse the mould with cold water before filling so the cream releases cleanly. Chill at least 4 hours, better overnight, then dip the mould in warm water for a few seconds and invert onto a chilled plate.
- YieldThree cups of cream plus the whipped volume fills a 1½ to 2 quart mould and serves eight to ten. The Sauterne Jelly garnish is a separate wine gelatine, chopped or cut into cubes and heaped around the base.
Gelatine creams of this kind — cream, sugar, a fortified wine and just enough gelatine to hold a shape — were a staple of the cold-dessert chapters of American cookbooks in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, and their spread tracks the arrival of reliable commercial granulated gelatine, which replaced the long labour of boiling down calves' feet or isinglass for household jelly. The name is generally taken to refer simply to the colour: no eggs, no chocolate, no fruit, so the moulded cream turns out a pale off-white against which the coloured wine jelly garnish reads as decoration. Madeira and Sauterne recur through this part of the book, reflecting a period taste for wine-scented sweets, and the fondness for fancy moulds and contrasting garnishes belongs to the same era of table display that produced tiered jellies and ribboned creams.