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Bavarois of Pistachios
Blanch and skin a quarter of a pound of pistachios and a dozen bitter almonds, pound in a mortar with six ounces of loaf sugar upon which has been rubbed the rind of a lemon; the pounded pistachios, etc., are then placed in a saucepan with three-quarters of a pint of boiling milk and one ounce of isinglass. Stir this mixture over the fire, and boil for about five minutes, then turn it into a basin. Set it on ice, and stir until it is at the point of setting, then mix in with it one pint of well-whipped cream, the juice of some spinach boiled until it has become curdled, and brush the inside of a mould with a paste-brush dipped in a little half-set jelly, then sprinkle in some of the chopped pistachios shaking them until they adhere to the sides. Pour the bavarois into the mould, place on the cover, and pack it in pounded ice and salt. When ready, say two hours after being placed in the ice-pack, turn it onto a fancy dish, and serve.
A classic cold moulded cream, but the ingredient list includes bitter almonds, which are not a food in any modern sense. The notes below explain the archaic terms and why this version should be read rather than cooked.
- Bitter almondsBitter almonds contain amygdalin, which the almond's own enzymes convert to hydrogen cyanide as soon as the kernels are crushed and wetted, which is what pounding in a mortar accomplishes. A dozen kernels are spread across a whole mould, but bitter almonds are toxic in quantity and a given dose falls harder on children. Their sale for eating is prohibited in the United States and restricted elsewhere; use a current bavarois recipe.
- IsinglassA gelatine made from the swim bladders of sturgeon and other fish, sold in sheets or shreds and once the standard setting agent for creams and jellies. It survives today mainly as a clarifying agent in cask beer and wine; the ounce called for here is far more than a modern recipe would use of powdered gelatine, though period isinglass varied widely in form and strength.
- Loaf sugarRefined sugar sold as a hard cone or block, broken and pounded as needed. Rubbing it against a lemon rind was the standard way to extract oil from the zest before microplanes; six ounces is roughly seven-eighths of a cup once ground.
- The pintOscar's kitchen worked in American measure, so three-quarters of a pint of milk is about a cup and a half and a pint of cream is two cups. British editions of the period would mean twenty-ounce pints, which makes both quantities larger while leaving the proportion between them the same.
- Spinach juiceBoiled spinach juice, strained after the solids curdle out, was the classic green colouring for pistachio creams — pistachios themselves give little colour once pounded with sugar. It contributes a faint vegetal note; the recipe leaves the quantity unstated.
- The ice packPacking a covered mould in crushed ice and coarse salt gave a brine well below freezing, chilling the bavarois firm in about two hours. A refrigerator does the same work more slowly; the mould is not churned, so this is setting, not freezing.
A bavarois — bavaroise, or Bavarian cream — is a custard or flavoured milk set with gelatine and lightened with whipped cream, codified in the great French kitchens of the nineteenth century and named, by tradition rather than by any documented Bavarian origin, for the German court cooks associated with the style. By the 1890s it was standard hotel work: made in a fancy mould, lined decoratively, turned out whole at table, and impressive precisely because it demanded ice, a steady hand and a cold larder. Bitter almonds appear here as a source of a strong marzipan-like almond aroma, and cookbooks of the period treated them as an ordinary flavouring rather than the cyanide source later regulation recognised. Oscar Tschirky, the Waldorf's celebrated maître d'hôtel, compiled his 1896 volume largely from the hotel's working repertoire, which is why the instructions assume a pastry brush, a mortar and an ice-and-salt pack close at hand.