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Mock Bavarian Cream
One-third of a cup of powdered sugar; yolks of two eggs; one-half cup of light wine, or fruit juice; and the grated rind, and juice of half a lemon. Mix these ingredients thoroughly, stirring constantly over the fire until the mixture begins to thicken. Add one teaspoon of granulated gelatine dissolved in one tablespoon of cold water, and stir until fully dissolved. Pour the mixture over the whites of two eggs beaten to a stiff froth. Set the saucepan into a large vessel filled with ice water and beat until it becomes quite firm. This may be served in any attractive form, either in one large mold or in individual ones.
The method here is a wine custard set with gelatine and lightened with beaten whites, but the whites go in raw and stay raw, and the yolk base is deliberately pulled from the heat early. Read the following as an explanation of why the recipe is a period document rather than a working set of instructions.
- The whites are never cookedTwo egg whites are beaten to a froth and the warm yolk mixture is poured over them, then the whole thing is beaten down over ice water. Nothing in that sequence brings the whites anywhere near a temperature that would deal with Salmonella, and the dessert is then served cold and unheated.
- The yolk base stops short as well"Stirring constantly over the fire until the mixture begins to thicken" is a visual cue, and the recipe gives no temperature, no timing and no doubled vessel, so there is no way to know whether the base ever reaches a temperature that would be considered safe. Adding cold gelatine solution immediately afterwards drops the temperature further.
- Chilling does not fix itSetting the pan in ice water and beating until firm is a texture step, not a safety step. Refrigeration slows bacterial growth; it does not undo it, and a gelatine cream is typically held for hours before serving.
- The gelatine is under-specifiedOne teaspoon of "granulated gelatine" for roughly a cup of liquid, beaten up with two whipped whites so that the volume rises well above that, gives at best a modest set, and period gelatine varied a good deal in strength. This is more likely a soft spooned cream than something that will stand unmoulded, whatever the last line suggests.
- "Light wine"Here this most plausibly means a table wine rather than a spirit or a fortified wine. The fruit-juice alternative given in the same breath tells you the wine is there for flavour and acid, not for preservation.
- Powdered sugarNineteenth-century "powdered" sugar is finely ground granulated sugar, not the modern confectioners' sugar cut with cornstarch. The two are not interchangeable in a custard, where the starch would change the body of the mixture.
- If you want the dishA current recipe for wine mousse or bavarois should be used, one that specifies a cooked base and an egg-white treatment with stated temperatures.
A true Bavarian cream — bavarois in the French kitchen repertoire — is a custard of egg yolks and milk or cream, set with gelatine and folded with whipped cream; the name is generally traced to French chefs of the early nineteenth century and its connection to Bavaria itself has never been firmly established. What makes this version "mock" is the absence of both milk and cream: wine or fruit juice stands in for the dairy entirely, and the lightness comes from beaten whites rather than whipped cream, which puts it closer to a chilled zabaglione or a wine jelly whisked to a froth. Substitution desserts of this kind fill a good deal of the cold-dessert chapter in late-Victorian household books, where cream was expensive, seasonal and quick to sour. The Butterick books, published by a pattern company for a broad readership of home cooks, favoured exactly this sort of recipe: a company dish assembled from the pantry, moulded to look like something grander.