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Spanish Cream
¼ box gelatine or 1 tablespoon granulated gelatine 3 cups milk Whites 3 eggs Yolk 3 eggs ½ cup sugar (scant) ¼ teaspoon salt 1 teaspoon vanilla or 3 tablespoons wine Scald milk with gelatine, add sugar, pour slowly on yolks of eggs slightly beaten. Return to double boiler and cook until thickened, stirring constantly; remove from range, add salt, flavoring, and whites of eggs beaten stiff. Turn into individual moulds, first dipped in cold water, and chill; serve with cream. More gelatine will be required if large moulds are used.
Coffee Soufflê 1½ cups coffee infusion ¼ teaspoon salt ½ cup milk 3 eggs 2/3 cup sugar ½ teaspoon vanilla 1 tablespoon granulated gelatine Mix coffee infusion, milk, one-half of the sugar and gelatine, and heat in double boiler. Add remaining sugar, salt, and yolks of eggs slightly beaten; cook until mixture thickens, remove from range, add whites of eggs beaten until stiff and vanilla. Mould, chill, and serve with cream.
A gelatine-set boiled custard, from the era when powdered gelatine was sold by the box rather than the envelope. The whole dish turns on how far you cook the custard.
- Gelatine measureA box of granulated gelatine of this period held roughly four portions of the size now sold as an envelope, so a quarter box is about one envelope (in the region of 2 1/4 teaspoons); the book's alternative of one tablespoon is a little more and would set firmer. For three cups of milk that gives a soft, spoonable cream, which is what individual moulds want -- the recipe itself notes that large moulds need more.
- Sugar and salt quantitiesThe sugar for a three-cup custard of this type is half a cup, scant, and the salt a quarter teaspoon. Read the fractions in that light.
- The hinge: custard temperatureCook the yolk mixture in the double boiler only until it coats the back of a spoon, roughly 170-175F. Past that the eggs curdle and no amount of stirring will bring the cream back smooth.
- Bloom the gelatine firstGranulated gelatine sprinkled straight into scalding milk tends to clump. Soften it in a few tablespoons of the cold milk for five minutes, then scald the remainder and stir the two together.
- The beaten whitesThe whites are folded into the hot custard and never cooked further. If you are serving anyone who should avoid undercooked egg, use pasteurized whites; folding them in while the custard is still steaming, rather than after it has cooled, also helps.
- LayeringLeft undisturbed, this mixture separates as it chills into a clear jelly below and a foam above. That two-tone effect is traditional; if you want it uniform, stir once or twice as the cream begins to thicken in the moulds.
- Wine optionThe three tablespoons of 'wine' in a dessert of this period would most often have been a fortified wine, sherry or Madeira, rather than table wine, though the book does not say so.
- Moulds and chillingDipping the moulds in cold water rather than oiling them keeps the surface glossy and lets the cream slip out. Allow at least four hours in the refrigerator; the original counted on an icebox and rather more time.
- Yield and serviceThe quantities suggest something on the order of six small moulds, though the book gives no yield. 'Serve with cream' means unwhipped pouring cream.
Spanish cream belongs to the great age of packaged gelatine, when a stable, reliable powder let ordinary households set custards and jellies more easily than before, though packaged gelatine in sheet and shred form had already been available to household cooks from the mid-nineteenth century. The name is old and loosely applied: English and American books used "Spanish cream" through the nineteenth century for a milk-and-egg custard stiffened with gelatine and turned out of a mould, and the connection to Spain is generally treated as decorative rather than documented. Its appearance in the cold-desserts chapter here, alongside the coffee version and a run of similar moulded creams, reflects how thoroughly the cooking-school curriculum drilled the boiled custard: master the double boiler and one technique yielded a dozen desserts, varied only by flavouring and mould.