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Chocolate Bavarois
Take one pint of cream and whip it to a stiff froth, soak one ounce of gelatine in one ounce of milk, scrape one ounce of chocolate to a powder, add two tablespoonfuls of powdered sugar, put in a small saucepan with one tablespoonful of boiling water, place on the fire and stir until it is quite smooth and glossy. Boil another cupful of milk, stir the chocolate in, add the gelatine; then pass through a strainer in a basin and add more sugar so that, with the two tablespoonfuls used before, the quantity will be half a pound altogether. Put the basin in ice and beat the mixture until it is thick; then pour in the cream, mix and put in the mould. When hard, invert onto a dish and pour more whipped cream over it.
A gelatine-set chocolate cream from the Waldorf's pastry side, written for cooks who already knew the method. Two things in it need adjusting before you scale it up: the gelatine and the sugar.
- The gelatine is the hingeOne ounce is roughly four envelopes of modern powdered gelatine, enough to set close to a quart of liquid firmly enough to slice. Period gelatine was less consistently graded than today's product; with a modern granulated gelatine, half an ounce (two envelopes) gives a cream that unmoulds cleanly and still melts on the tongue.
- Soaking liquidOne ounce of milk to one ounce of gelatine is barely enough to wet it. Use about a quarter cup of cold milk, let it stand until spongy, then dissolve it in the hot chocolate milk off the heat, stirring until no grains remain against the back of the spoon.
- The chocolateAn ounce "scraped to a powder" means a hard, unsweetened block chocolate, which is why so much sugar follows. Modern unsweetened baking chocolate is the closest match; an ounce is a mild flavour by current standards, and two ounces will not upset the set.
- Half a pound of sugarThe recipe calls for powdered sugar, so half a pound is closer to two cups (about one and an eighth cups if granulated), for a finished mixture of roughly a quart. It reflects period taste and the fact that the chocolate was bitter. Between a half and two-thirds cup total suits most palates now.
- MeasuresA pint of cream is two cups, and it should be heavy or whipping cream, whipped to soft-to-medium peaks rather than truly stiff so it folds in without deflating.
- The ice bath is not optionalThe custard base must be beaten over ice until it thickens to the consistency of unbeaten egg white before the cream goes in. Too warm and the cream melts and the mixture separates into a jelly layer and a foam layer; too cold and it sets in lumps.
- Setting and unmouldingFour hours in the refrigerator, or overnight for a large mould. Dip the mould in warm water for five to ten seconds, not longer, then invert onto a chilled dish.
- YieldAbout a quart of finished mixture, serving six to eight.
Bavarois, or Bavarian cream, is a cold moulded dessert of custard or flavoured milk set with gelatine and lightened with whipped cream. The name is generally traced to French chefs of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries who worked for Bavarian noble households, though the connection to Bavaria itself has never been firmly documented; Carême codified the form in the early 1800s and it entered the standard French repertoire from there. By the time Oscar Tschirky was running the Waldorf's dining rooms in the 1890s, a moulded bavarois was the sort of dish a hotel kitchen had every reason to keep on hand: it could be made in quantity hours ahead, held on ice, and turned out to order, which mattered in a kitchen serving several hundred covers. Note that this version has no eggs at all, unlike the classic crème anglaise base — a plainer, faster hotel shortcut that leans entirely on gelatine and cream for body.