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Diplomatic Cream
Soak one ounce of gelatine in one teacupful of cold water. Pour one pint of cream into a saucepan and place it over the fire for a few minutes to warm slightly, then whip it and remove the froth; add enough milk to the cream that is left to make one pint in all, put in six ounces of sugar and boil up. When it boils add the gelatine, stirring rapidly until the latter dissolves. Strain it through a sieve into a basin in which the whites of four or five eggs have previously been whipped and add one teaspoonful of essence of vanilla and one tablespoonful of light wine. Stir well and when it begins to thicken add the whipped cream and, when thick enough to drop, one breakfast cupful of mixed candied fruit. Place in a mould, set it on the ice, and when well set turn it out and garnish with angelica leaves, wine jelly or fruit. A pint of blanched almonds finely chopped may be used instead of, or as well as, the candied fruit.
A moulded bavarois of the 1890s hotel kitchen: warm sweetened cream set with gelatine, lightened with beaten whites and whipped cream, studded with candied fruit. Most of what needs translating is measurement and the strength of modern gelatine.
- The hinge: add the gelatine off the boil, then work fastThe hinge: add the gelatine as the cream boils, then work fast -- The hot cream must be strained straight onto the beaten whites and folded while everything is still fluid, but the whipped cream and fruit only go in once the base begins to thicken. Add them too early and the fruit sinks and the cream deflates; too late and the mixture sets in lumps before it reaches the mould.
- Gelatine strengthOne ounce is about 28 g, or four ¼-oz envelopes of modern powdered gelatine. Nineteenth-century gelatine varied in strength between brands and may have been weaker than today's; three envelopes (about 21 g) will set this quantity firmly enough to unmould without giving it the rubbery bounce of a Victorian shape.
- Cup measuresA teacupful here is roughly 6 fl oz, a breakfast cupful about 8-10 fl oz. Neither is exact in this period, so treat the water for soaking as "enough to cover and swell" rather than a fixed figure.
- Warming and skimming the creamThe instruction is not as odd as it reads: the pint of cream is barely warmed, whipped, and the risen froth lifted off and reserved as the whipped cream folded in at the end. What drains back is topped up with milk to make a fresh pint for the custard base. Modern practice is simpler — whip half a pint of cold heavy cream to soft peaks and hold it in the refrigerator, and use a pint of cream-and-milk for the base.
- Raw whitesThe boiling base tempers the beaten whites but will not reliably bring them to a safe temperature, and the finished cream is never cooked again. Use pasteurised egg whites, or whites from eggs you would eat lightly cooked, and keep the dessert refrigerated.
- Essence and light wineEssence of vanilla is vanilla extract. "Light wine" most likely means a light table wine, such as a sweet white; a dry-to-medium sherry or Madeira is the common modern substitute, though both are fortified rather than light. One tablespoon is a seasoning, not a flavour in its own right.
- Setting on iceSubstitute the refrigerator: four to six hours in a 1½–2 quart mould, or overnight. To turn out, dip the mould to the rim in warm water for ten seconds and invert onto a chilled plate.
- Garnish and yieldAngelica — the candied stem of Angelica archangelica, a plant of the carrot and parsley family — is still sold by confectioners but is easily replaced with candied citrus peel or fresh fruit. Wine jelly means a clear wine-flavoured gelatine jelly, chopped and spooned round the base. The mould serves eight to ten.
- The almond variationA pint of blanched chopped almonds is a large quantity by volume, roughly 8-10 oz by weight. Chop them finely and fold them in at the same stage as the fruit, or they will settle to the bottom of the mould.
Diplomatic cream, crème diplomate, belongs to the family of moulded cold creams — bavarois, charlottes, "puddings à la diplomate" — that closed formal dinners throughout the late nineteenth century, when gelatine had become reliable enough to be bought by the ounce rather than boiled from calves' feet. The name is generally traced to the diplomatic table rather than to any single person, and it attached loosely to rich, wine-scented, candied-fruit desserts; in modern professional usage crème diplomate has narrowed to mean pastry cream lightened with whipped cream, which is not quite the dish here. Oscar Tschirky, the Waldorf's maître d'hôtel, collected this sort of formula. The candied fruit and angelica are the tell — imported, expensive, and visible from across the dining room.