Home › The Waldorf Kitchen › Maraschino Bavarois
Maraschino Bavarois
Put into a saucepan one and one-half ounces of isinglass, the strained juice of two lemons, four tablespoonfuls of loaf-sugar, and one-half pint of water, and boil until the liquor is reduced to half its original quantity, then skim it carefully and pass it through a fine silk-sieve into a basin. When cold stir in well four wineglassfuls of Maraschino and two wineglassfuls of brandy, and leave until on the point of setting; then mix one pint of well-whipped cream with it, and pour the whole into a mould. Pack the mould in ice, and leave it until the cream has set. When ready to serve dip the mould in tepid water, wipe it and turn the bavarois onto a fancy dish.
A cold moulded cream from the Waldorf's pastry side, built on isinglass rather than sheet or powdered gelatine. Two things decide whether it works: the strength of the setting agent and the sheer volume of spirit going into it.
- IsinglassDried fish swim bladder, once the standard clarifying and setting agent; it is now sold mainly to brewers and winemakers. Modern gelatine is the practical stand-in, but the two are not interchangeable by weight, and 1.5 oz of isinglass is a genuinely ambiguous figure since its setting power varied by grade. Work instead from the gelatine manufacturer's ratio for the finished volume of liquid.
- Do not boil modern gelatineThe instruction to boil the liquor down by half belongs to isinglass, which was routinely simmered. Powdered or leaf gelatine loses strength if held at a boil; it should be bloomed and dissolved in warm liquid only. If you reduce the lemon-and-sugar syrup, do it first and add the gelatine off the heat.
- The alcohol is the risk to the setFour wineglasses of maraschino and two of brandy is roughly twelve fluid ounces of spirit against a quarter pint of syrup and a pint of cream. High alcohol weakens gelatine noticeably. Expect a soft mould, and consider it the reason the original calls for so much setting agent.
- WineglassfulIn American cookbooks of this period a wineglass is about 2 fl oz (a quarter cup). Four of maraschino is half a cup twice over; the finished cream is strongly liquorous by design.
- Loaf-sugarSugar broken from a hard cone or sold as pressed lumps, crushed before measuring. Ordinary granulated sugar, four tablespoons, gives the same result.
- Maraschino means the liqueurA clear cherry liqueur made with the fruit and its crushed kernels, far less sweet and syrupy than the juice from a jar of bright red cocktail cherries. Substituting the latter gives a sweet, almond-flavoured pink cream that is not this dish.
- Silk sieveFine silk bolting cloth; a double layer of damp muslin or a very fine chinois does the job.
- Packing in ice, and foldingThe mould was packed in ice because mechanical refrigeration was not yet a domestic fixture. Four to six hours in the refrigerator is the equivalent. "On the point of setting" matters: fold the whipped cream in when the jelly has thickened to raw-egg-white consistency, or the cream will float and the mould will separate into layers.
- Unmoulding and yieldA few seconds in tepid water, no more, or the outer surface slumps. The quantity fills a 1.5-quart mould and serves six to eight.
Bavarois, or Bavarian cream, is the classic French pastry preparation of a flavoured base lightened with whipped cream and set with gelatine; the Bavarian connection is old and generally traced to French chefs working for German courts, though the link has never been documented with any precision. Maraschino, the flavouring here, is a clear liqueur distilled from marasca cherries and their crushed stones, historically associated with Zadar on the Dalmatian coast and imported into American bars and pastry kitchens in quantity by the end of the nineteenth century. Oscar Tschirky's 1896 book records the working repertoire of the Waldorf, and a moulded, spirit-heavy cold cream of this kind was exactly what a hotel kitchen wanted: made hours ahead, held on ice, turned out onto a "fancy dish" at the moment of service. The reliance on isinglass rather than the packaged granulated gelatine that would soon dominate American kitchens places the recipe firmly on the older side of that transition.