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Bavarian Cream
Soak one-half box of gelatine in one-half cup of cold water for one hour, and whip one pint of cream and set it to drain. Beat the yolks of fouur eggs add one-half cup of sugar and pour upon it slowly one (pint of milk scalding hot. (One-half a vanilla bean may be placed in the cold milk and scalded with it, or if the extract is used it should be added when the mixture is cool.) Put the pan on the fire to set the egg, removing it as soon as the custard begins to thicken. Add a pinch of salt and stir the gelatine into the hot custard. When the gelatine has dissolved, strain and cool. As the mixture stiffens, beat in the cream.
Bavarian Creams may be the foundation of many delicious desserts The following are important points to remember when making: (1) Have the cream very cold. (2) After whipping, drain until the cream is spongy. (3) Dissolve the gelatine in the hot custard, but never boil it. (4) Do not add the whipped cream to the gelatine mixture, till the latter has begun to stiffen slightly.
FRUIT BAVARIAN CREAM (Without Custard Foundation) - Soak one-half box of gelatine in one-half cup of cold water. Press one pint of fresh fruit (or canned fruit may be used instead) through a sieve. Pour one-fourth of a cup of boiling water on the gelatine, and strain it into the fruit.
When the jelly begins to set, fold in one pint of whipped cream. stirring until well mixed. *Strawberries, raspberries and peaches are the fruits generally used for this recipe.
A porcelain mold is used for the fruit mixtures, as tin sometimes discolors the cream.
A classic bavarois: stirred custard set with gelatine and lightened with whipped cream. The four numbered points in the original are the whole technique, and they still hold.
- Half a box of gelatineBoxed granulated gelatine of this period commonly ran to about 1 oz in total, so half a box is roughly 2 level tablespoons (about 14 g), though package sizes varied and this is an approximation. That is a firm, moldable set for the amount this recipe makes; if you want a spoonable texture rather than one that stands unmolded, use less.
- Cooking the custard"Removing it as soon as the custard begins to thicken" means about 170-180F, when it coats the back of a spoon and a drawn finger leaves a clean track. Past that the yolks curdle; a double boiler or very low heat gives you room to react.
- Never boil the gelatinePoint 3 is the hinge. Stir the soaked gelatine into the hot custard off the heat, where the residual warmth dissolves it completely. Prolonged boiling can weaken the set, which is why the recipe is emphatic about it.
- Draining the whipped creamNineteenth-century cream separated as it was whipped, and the instruction to drain it in a sieve removed the thin liquid that would otherwise weep into the mold. Modern pasteurized heavy cream throws off very little; whip to soft, not stiff, peaks and skip the draining.
- Timing the foldWait until the cooled custard is the consistency of raw egg white and just beginning to mound. Fold whipped cream into a liquid base and the two separate into a layer of jelly under a layer of foam; fold it into a base already set solid and you get lumps.
- VanillaHalf a bean split and scalded with the milk gives the better flavor. Extract must go in only when the mixture is cool, as the original says, since the aromatics are volatile.
- Molding and unmoldingRinse the mold with cold water before filling, chill at least 4 hours, then dip the mold briefly in warm water and invert. The note about porcelain for the fruit version is sound: acidic purees react with bare tin and older metals.
- The fruit versionSweeten the sieved fruit to taste before adding the gelatine, since chilling mutes sweetness. Avoid fresh pineapple, kiwi, papaya or figs, whose enzymes digest gelatine and prevent setting; canned pineapple is heat-treated and safe.
- YieldAbout 1 1/2 quarts, serving eight to ten in a single large mold or in individual cups.
Bavarian cream is the English name for the French crème bavaroise, a cold cream set with isinglass or gelatine that became a fixture of the grand nineteenth-century dessert table; the connection to Bavaria is traditional rather than documented, usually explained as the dish having been devised by a French chef in the service of the Wittelsbach court. Its appearance in the Butterick book, published by a pattern company for a middle-class household audience, marks a shift: by the turn of the twentieth century commercially packaged granulated gelatine had replaced the laborious business of clarifying calf's-foot stock or isinglass, and a dessert that had required a professional kitchen could be assembled by a cook with a whisk, a mold and an icebox. The insistence on very cold cream and careful timing is a reminder that the icebox, not the freezer, was the tool at hand.