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Raspberry Cream
Pass one quart of raspberries through a fine sieve to remove the seeds; mix in well one breakfast cupful of cream and sufficient sugar to sweeten. Put all into a stone or earthenware bowl, whisk well, and as the froth rises skim it off with a spoon and put it on a hair-sieve. Put the cream that may be left in the bowl into a deep glass dish, pile the whipped cream on the top, mounting it up as high as possible, decorate with a flower in the center, and serve.
A survival of the old English "whipt cream" method, where the froth is skimmed off the surface and drained rather than beaten stiff in the bowl. A few notes make it behave in a modern kitchen.
- The hinge: skim, don't beat stiffThe technique depends on whisking a loose cream-and-fruit mixture so that a light foam rises, lifting it off with a spoon as it forms and letting it drain. If you whip the whole bowl to soft peaks you get raspberry Chantilly, which is pleasant but not this dish.
- A breakfast cupfulA breakfast cup is larger than a teacup, generally taken as 8 to 10 fluid ounces. Use a generous cup and expect to want more: a quart of raspberries purées down to roughly a cup and a half, and that much fruit against one cup of cream gives a thin, slow-frothing mixture.
- Use heavy cream, coldNineteenth-century "cream" was unhomogenised and often high in fat. Heavy or whipping cream at 36 percent or above, straight from the refrigerator, is the closest modern equivalent; single or light cream will not hold a froth.
- Hair sieveA sieve of woven horsehair, the standard fine sieve of the period; metal mesh could also discolour fruit and dairy. A fine nylon or stainless mesh strainer set over a bowl does the same job for both the seeding and the draining of the froth.
- Stone or earthenware bowlProbably because it stays cold and does not react with acidic fruit, though earthenware was also the ordinary kitchen bowl of the day. A chilled glass or stainless bowl works; chill the whisk as well.
- Quantities of fruit and sugarA quart of raspberries is about 1¼ to 1½ pounds. Sweeten the purée before combining, taste, and remember that cold mutes sugar, so it should read slightly sweeter than you want at the table.
- The flowerIf you garnish with a real bloom, use an unsprayed edible one such as a rose petal, violet or borage flower, and keep florist's stock off the dish.
- Yield and servingServes about four to six in a deep glass dish. It is served immediately: the piled froth soon begins to weep, and the fruit will slacken the cream if it stands.
Skimming the froth from lightly whisked cream and draining it on a sieve is the older way of making whipped cream, described in English household books long before the wire whisk and the stand mixer made stiff peaks routine; it belongs to the same family as syllabub, where the foam is lifted off a sweetened liquid and heaped on top. Oscar Tschirky, the Waldorf's celebrated ma tre d'h tel, published his collection in 1896, and this entry is generally said to preserve a technique already well established by then. The instruction to mount the cream "as high as possible" and finish it with a flower is often taken to reflect the period's taste in dessert service, in which the height and silhouette of a dish on the sideboard may have counted for a good deal.