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Dessert Russe
This may be made of either sponge or pound-cake mixture, and baked in a fancy mold, If the prescribed mold is not available, an ordinary two quart ice-cream mold would answer the purpose pretty well. After being baked and allowed to completely cool, the cake should be iced with thin icing, either pink or white, and piped in contrasting colors. Thus, if iced white, it should be piped pink, and vice versa. Further ornamentation can be made by a proper distribution of pastilles, crystallized fruits, etc., and the whole surmounted by a small spray or bouquet of flowers. Another way of making it is by use of stale cake. If you have stale sponge or pound-cake, first cut from it the base with a sharp knife (see figure 1, page 355); then the piece as per figure 2, then the piece as per figure 3. Place the three, one above the other, then ice and ornament it. రరా 3 000000000 Chantilly Custard. (363) 2 6 Either of the foregoing cakes are left as they come from the mold, or in the shape they are cut with the knife. The pieces, numbered 4, 5, 6, 7, and 8, added, being only for the russe. For the russe, produce the cake by either of the above methods, remembering to have as large a hole in it as circumstances will allow, (see dotted line in Nos. 1, 2, and 3,) this, of course, is filled with cream; then piece No. 3 is added and secured. Next take a thin piece of cake, not more than a quarter of an inch in thickness, and cut out the pieces as per Nos. 4, 5, 6, 7, and 8, and set them aside for future use. Next, take a pallet-knife, and cover the whole russe with red or some other colored jelly. This done, place on the pieces Nos. 4, 5, 6, 7, and 8, in their respective places (the jelly will hold them). Leave the cut part outside, so that none of the baked parts will show, and the desired effect is produced. The pieces being in their places, you next pipe and otherwise ornament; finish the whole by the addition of a spray or bouquet of flowers on the top, or with a bouquet of leaves, piped on with a leaf tube. Another way to make it, is to cut the base out of a solid piece of cake; make the hole and fill it with cream; lay on that a thin piece of cake. Then with a cone and tube pile up the cream in pyramid shape. Have ready six strips cut the proper shape, i. e., the same width at the bottom as one of the six sections of the base, and gradually tapering to the top. Place these pieces in their proper position, fasten them with a little icing, cover the whole with jelly, as in the other case, or leave plain, as you choose. In either case pipe and otherwise ornament it. If preferable, you can place the strips to form piece No. 3, securing them with icing; then force cream through the opening on the top. By this means you get that part better filled with cream than by any other means.
This is a confectioner's assembly plan rather than a formula: no quantities, no oven times, just the architecture of a moulded, iced and piped centrepiece. The referenced diagrams are lost to the reader, so read the numbered pieces as a description of a tiered, hollowed cake rather than a pattern to trace.
- Start with a firm cakeThe recipe allows either sponge or pound cake. Stale cake is offered here as a second method; day-old crumb cuts more cleanly than fresh, though the recipe gives no reason for the choice.
- The moldA "two quart ice-cream mold" would have been a hinged metal mold of roughly 2-quart / 2-litre capacity. Any deep fluted or charlotte tin of that volume works. The book gives no oven temperature or time; bake to a skewer test.
- "Thin icing" means water or glace icing"Thin icing" is most likely a water or glace icing -- confectioners' sugar slackened to a pourable ribbon, poured over the cooled cake and left to set to a matte shell. The contrasting piping would have been a stiffer icing, most likely royal.
- Cone and tube, pallet-knifeA "cone" is a rolled paper piping cone, the "tube" the metal nozzle set in its tip; a piping bag and tips do the same job. A pallet-knife is a straight or offset palette spatula.
- The jelly coatA red or other coloured jelly (redcurrant would suit), warmed just until brushable and no hotter, is spread as an adhesive and a glaze. It must be tacky rather than runny or the applied cake strips will slide, and it must not soak the quarter-inch pieces.
- "Cream" is whipped creamThe hollow is filled with sweetened whipped cream, sometimes stabilised with a little gelatine in period practice. Once filled, the cake is a perishable dessert: keep it refrigerated and serve the same day, since a cream-filled cake left at room temperature for a display evening is exactly the sort of thing that spoils quietly.
- Pastilles and crystallised fruitPastilles were small hard sugar confections. Crystallised angelica, cherries and citron are the traditional colours; modern candied peel and glace cherries stand in directly.
- The flowersThe spray or bouquet may have been real blooms or made of sugar work; the recipe does not say. If you use real flowers, use only unsprayed, non-toxic blooms and lift them off before cutting; piped leaves with a leaf tube, the alternative given here, avoid the question entirely.
- YieldA 2-quart mold, filled with cream, serves about ten to twelve in small wedges. Cut it with a long thin blade wiped between slices, or the jelly glaze drags.
"Dessert Russe" belongs to the same fashion as charlotte russe and other a la russe dishes that swept English and American cookery after service a la russe -- courses brought in sequence from the sideboard rather than all set out at once -- displaced the older French style through the middle of the nineteenth century. The name generally signals nothing Russian about the ingredients; it signals a cold, cream-filled, architectural sweet meant to be looked at before it is eaten. This is not a home baker's recipe but a professional confectioner's method, written for someone who already owns paper cones, a set of tubes and a hinged mold, and who is expected to read the accompanying engraved figures as a cutting pattern.