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Royal Cream
Put one quart of milk into a basin with one-half an ounce of gelatine and let it stand for half an hour; then add the yolks of three eggs beaten up with four tablespoonfuls of sugar and stir well; also a little flavoring of vanilla. Put the basin into a pan of hot water on the fire and stir constantly until the mixture thickens. Beat the whites of three eggs to a stiff froth and add to the basin immediately after it is removed from the hot water; stir well once more, pour the mixture into moulds and place them one side to harden. Turn them out and serve with or without sauce.
A cooked custard set with gelatine and lightened with meringue — what a French kitchen of the period would have called a bavarois. The instructions are terse in the way Oscar's usually are; the points below fill in the numbers he assumed his cooks knew.
- The hinge: never let the custard boilThree yolks in a quart of milk is a thin custard, and it will curdle well before it looks thick. Keep the water beneath at a bare simmer and pull the basin when the mixture coats a spoon and reads about 175-180F.
- GelatineHalf an ounce is about two envelopes of modern powdered gelatine, roughly 4 teaspoons. Gelatine sold in the 1890s varied in strength between brands, so period quantities are not directly comparable to today's; with modern product this may set soft. For a mould that turns out cleanly, weigh closer to three-quarters of an ounce, or serve in glasses.
- "Let it stand for half an hour"That half hour is the bloom — the gelatine hydrating in cold milk. Do not skip it or shorten it, or you will get grains in the finished cream.
- Basin and pan of hot waterA heatproof mixing bowl over a saucepan, i.e. a double boiler. "On the fire" means over direct heat, which in a kitchen of the 1890s would typically have been a coal range.
- Flavoring"A little flavoring of vanilla" is not quantified; a teaspoon or two of extract suits a quart of milk, or steep a split bean in the milk and remove it before the yolks go in.
- Folding the whitesAdd them while the custard is still warm and slack. If you wait until it cools the gelatine begins to set and the meringue will streak rather than fold in.
- Raw whitesThe whites go in off the heat and never reach a pasteurising temperature. Use pasteurised egg whites if serving anyone elderly, pregnant, very young or immune-compromised.
- "Place them one side to harden"Refrigerate, covered, at least 4 hours and preferably overnight. A cool larder will not set this reliably.
- Unmoulding and yieldDip the mould briefly in warm water and run a thin knife around the rim. A quart of milk plus eggs and meringue fills a 1.5-quart mould and serves six to eight, with a fruit purée or a chocolate sauce.
Royal cream is one name among many for the moulded, gelatine-set custard often identified with the French bavarois — a staple of the late nineteenth-century restaurant sweet course, where a dessert that could be prepared in the morning, chilled, and turned out to order was worth more to the kitchen than one made à la minute. Oscar Tschirky came to the Waldorf as maître d'hôtel at its 1893 opening and published his Cook Book in 1896, and its dessert chapters lean heavily on this family of chilled moulds. Their popularity in American books of the 1890s is often linked to improvements in commercial gelatine, though the connection is hard to pin down; in any case a set cream was a mark of a serious kitchen. The instruction to serve "with or without sauce" is the restaurant habit showing through — the same base, dressed one way for a banquet menu and another for a plain supper.