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Fruit Chartreuse
Follow the recipe for Diplomatic Puddings, filling the cavity in the centre with Fruit Salad No. 1.
This is an assembly instruction rather than a standalone recipe: it depends entirely on two other entries in the book, a Diplomatic Pudding built in a ring or border mould and Fruit Salad No. 1. Most of the work is in the moulding, and that is where the difficulties are.
- The hinge: mould temperatureIf your edition's Diplomatic Pudding is set with gelatin and custard, turning it out depends on its being thoroughly set: several hours in the refrigerator, longer if the mould is deep. Whatever the chilling method, the mould must not be filled while any component is warm or the layers will bleed together.
- What a "chartreuse" mould isWhat the mould must do -- The instruction to fill 'the cavity in the centre' implies a border or ring mould, or a plain mould with the centre kept hollow by an inner tin; the book does not itself name a mould. A modern ring mould or a savarin pan does the same job; a springform tin will not, since the point is a clean turned-out dome or ring with a cavity.
- Diplomatic pudding, brieflyIn books of this period it usually means sponge fingers or stale sponge cake lined into a mould, layered with candied and glace fruit, and bound with a rich custard set with gelatin, though versions differ. If your edition's version calls for isinglass or sheet gelatin, powdered gelatin substitutes at roughly one envelope (a scant tablespoon, about 7 g) per pint of liquid.
- Fresh fruit and gelatinFill the cavity only just before serving. Fresh pineapple, kiwi, papaya and fresh figs carry enzymes that break down gelatin protein and will soften the pudding where they touch it; canned pineapple, being heated, does not.
- Fruit Salad No. 1Fruit Salad No. 1 is a separate entry; consult it rather than assuming its contents. Any well-drained macerated fruit works, but drain it hard — free syrup will run down the sides and slacken the pudding.
- UnmouldingDip the mould in warm water for ten to fifteen seconds, loosen the top edge with a fingertip, and invert onto a chilled platter. A wet platter lets you slide the pudding into position if it lands off-centre.
- YieldA quart to a quart-and-a-half mould serves six to eight, which is the scale these cold desserts were built for. Serve the day it is made; sponge-lined puddings turn soggy overnight.
A chartreuse began life as a savoury dish: game or forcemeat concealed inside a mould lined with neatly arranged vegetables, a construction generally traced to the Carthusian monks, whose order gave its name to both the liqueur and the pattern of vegetable-clad cookery said to disguise meat on fast days. By the nineteenth century the word had loosened to mean almost anything moulded in a decorative case, and confectioners applied it freely to sweets — hence a sponge-and-custard pudding with fruit in the middle. Its appearance here, as a one-line cross-reference in the cold desserts chapter, shows how Butterick's editors built variety: a household with a ring mould, a packet of gelatin and yesterday's sponge cake could produce a dish with a French name and no new shopping, which was very much the promise of an American general-purpose cook book aimed at the readers of a pattern catalogue.