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French Charlotte
Remove the center from an almond sponge-cake, leaving the bottom and sides about one inch in thickness. Place in a basin with some sherry about one-half pound of macaroons, and allow them to soak well. Whip to a stiff froth one pint of cream. Put the soaked macaroons at the bottom of a sponge-cake mould, then spread a thick layer of preserve over them and fill it up with the cream, piling it high in the center. Ornament the edge and middle with icing by squeezing it through a cornet. Stand the charlotte in a glass dish until required.
An assembly dessert rather than a cooked one: the work is in the shell, the soak, and keeping the cream stiff. Everything can be done a few hours ahead, but not the day before.
- The mouldA "sponge-cake mould" here is a plain, deep, straight-sided or slightly tapered tin; a charlotte mould, or a 7–8 inch souffle dish or springform, will stand in. The recipe does not say what becomes of the hollowed cake, but the likely reading is that it is set into the mould so its sides support the filling.
- Almond sponge-cakeA genoise or sponge enriched with ground almonds; presumably baked in a tin of the same size so it fits the mould, though the recipe does not say. A bought pound cake or plain sponge with a little almond extract will stand in; you need a crumb firm enough to hold a one-inch wall without collapsing.
- Half a pound of macaroonsThese are the old-style chewy almond macaroons — amaretti or Italian almond biscuits — not French macaron shells, which turn to paste. Roughly 8 oz, which is a generous double handful.
- How much sherryThe original gives no quantity. Figure about 1/2 cup, added a few tablespoons at a time until the macaroons are soft and moist but not soupy; a dry or medium sherry suits the sweetness better than a cream sherry.
- One pint of creamTwo cups of heavy cream, whipped stiff. Chill the bowl and beaters, and stop the moment it holds a firm peak — Oscar wants it piled high in the center, which overwhipped, grainy cream will not do.
- PreserveApricot or raspberry, warmed slightly and stirred smooth so it spreads without tearing the macaroon layer. Strain out large pieces of fruit; they weep into the cream.
- The cornetA paper cone, the period's piping bag. Any small star or plain tip does the job. The icing is a stiff decorating icing, not a pourable glaze.
- Holding and serving"Until required" means a few hours in a cold place — today, refrigerated, and served the same day, since the cream softens and the cake takes up the sherry. Serves 8 to 10.
The charlotte was a nineteenth-century restaurant staple in two forms: the hot apple charlotte baked in a bread-lined mould, and the cold charlotte russe, generally credited to Careme, in which a mould lined with ladyfingers is filled with bavarian cream. Oscar's "French Charlotte" is a hotel variation on the cold type, substituting a hollowed almond sponge for the ladyfinger lining and sherry-soaked macaroons for the usual gelatin-set custard — quicker to assemble in a busy kitchen and sturdier on a buffet. Macaroons soaked in wine or liqueur were a common device in Victorian and Edwardian sweets, doing the work of a soaked cake layer at a fraction of the effort, and the finished dome, piped and set out in a glass dish, was meant as much to be looked at as eaten. That display logic runs through the Waldorf book, written when Oscar Tschirky was maitre d'hotel of a house whose dining rooms set the standard for turn-of-the-century New York.