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Diplomatic Pudding
This is molded in a double mold; the outer, being filled with jelly, and the inner one with Bavarian Cream, or Charlotte Russe mixture. Make a lemon jelly or wine jelly mixture. Dip a mold in ice water, and pour in the jelly mixture one-half an inch deep; with candied fruits make a design on the bottom of the mold as soon as the jelly is firm. Cover the fruit with one-half inch more of the jelly mixture, dropping it in by spoonfuls so that it will not disarrange the design.
When this second layer of jelly is firm, place a smaller mold exactly in the center on the jelly, and fill with ice water. Make a layer of fruit and jelly alternately, until the space between the two molds is filled. Use different colored fruits for the different layers of jelly. The sides may be plain if preferred, the design on the top being the only decoration.
When firm, pour out the ice water in the inside mold, and fill with tepid water; this will enable you to remove the smaller mold. Fill the cavity with a cream having a flavor which combines well with the flavor of the jelly around it. Turn out of mold and serve.
An elaborate two-part molded jelly from the era when a cold dessert was judged by its architecture. Nothing here is difficult, but it is a project measured in hours of chilling rather than minutes of work.
- Gelatin quantitiesThe book assumes you have made the lemon or wine jelly by a separate recipe, so no quantity appears here. For a mold that must stand unsupported, work firmer than a spoonable jelly — roughly 2 to 2 1/2 envelopes (about 4 1/2 to 5 1/2 teaspoons) of granulated gelatin per quart of liquid. Wine and citrus acid both weaken the set.
- The double moldUse two nesting bowls or metal molds with about an inch of clearance all round: a 6- to 8-cup outer and a 3- to 4-cup inner. Ice water in the small mold does double duty, chilling the jelly and weighting the mold down so it does not float.
- Why tepid, not hot, waterFilling the inner mold with lukewarm water releases it in a minute or two. Hot water melts a channel into the jelly wall and the cream filling will then leak through.
- Chilling timeAllow 20 to 30 minutes in the refrigerator per half-inch layer, and 4 hours or overnight for the finished pudding before unmolding. The whole assembly wants a full afternoon.
- Candied fruitCandied cherries, angelica, citron and greengage were among the usual decorating fruits of the period. Blot syrup off any candied fruit before setting it in place, or it will cloud the jelly around it.
- Charlotte Russe mixtureIn books of this period this generally means sweetened whipped cream set with a little gelatin, sometimes with beaten egg white folded in; this page does not spell it out. If your version calls for uncooked egg white, use pasteurized whites; a cooked Bavarian cream custard avoids the question entirely.
- UnmoldingDip the outer mold in warm water for 10 to 15 seconds, run a thin knife around the rim, and invert onto a chilled wet platter so the pudding can be slid into position.
- YieldA 6- to 8-cup mold serves 8 to 10, cut in wedges so each portion shows both the jelly wall and the cream center.
Diplomate, or diplomatic pudding, belongs to the repertoire of nineteenth-century French restaurant cookery that American household books absorbed wholesale; the name is generally traced to the fashion for flattering diplomats and statesmen in dish titles, alongside the various dishes à la Talleyrand. Its appearance in the Butterick book — a volume issued by a pattern company, aimed squarely at the middle-class housewife rather than a professional chef — shows how far such set pieces had traveled by 1911. What made them possible was commercial powdered gelatin, sold in packaged form from about the 1890s, which replaced the long boiling of calves' feet and isinglass and put molded jelly work within reach of a cook with one pair of hands. The layered fruit designs answer the period's taste for desserts that arrived at table as a display, to be admired before anyone touched a spoon.