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Snow Custard
Half a package of Coxe's gelatine, three eggs, two cups of sugar, juice of one lemon; soak the gelatine one hour in a tea-cup of cold water, add one pint boiling water, stir until thoroughly dissolved, add two-thirds of the sugar and the lemon juice; beat the whites of the eggs to a stiff froth, and when the gelatine is quite cold, whip it into the whites, a spoonful at a time, from half an hour to an hour. Whip steadily and evenly, and when all is stiff, pour in a mold, or in a dozen egg-glasses previously wet with cold water, and set in a cold place. In four or five hours turn into a glass dish. Make a custard of one and one-half pints milk, yolks of eggs, and remainder of the sugar, flavor with vanilla, and when the meringue or snow-balls are turned out of the mold, pour this around the base.-Mrs Gov. Thayer, Wyoming Territory.
This is a two-part dessert: a whipped gelatine "snow" unmolded into a dish, with a thin stirred custard poured around it. The snow depends on raw egg white that is never heated, which is the reason it cannot be recommended as written.
- Why this one failsThe whites are beaten raw and folded into gelatine that the recipe insists must be quite cold before they meet, so nothing in the snow ever reaches a temperature that would kill Salmonella. It then sits four or five hours in "a cold place" — in the 1880s a larder or ice chest, often well above refrigeration temperature — and is served without further cooking. Use a current recipe built on pasteurized egg white or a cooked meringue if you want this dessert.
- The custard halfThe milk-and-yolk custard is at least cooked, but the recipe gives no temperature, no time and no test. A stirred custard is done at roughly 175-180F, when it coats a spoon; the original assumes you already know that, and it assumes a cook standing over the stove rather than a thermometer.
- Coxe's gelatine"Coxe's" is Cox's Sparkling Gelatine, the Edinburgh product widely sold in America in this period, supplied in a boxed package rather than a modern envelope, so "half a package" is genuinely ambiguous. The original box weight is not stated in the recipe and should not be guessed at precisely.
- A teacupA teacup in this period is not the eight-ounce measuring cup; it is usually reckoned at about four to six fluid ounces. That water is what soaks (blooms) the gelatine before the pint of boiling water is added, though it still counts toward the total liquid.
- Egg-glassesThe "dozen egg-glasses" are small footed cups for serving a soft-boiled egg at table, each holding only an ounce or two. They indicate the intended presentation: a dozen small snowballs rather than one large mold, all turned out together into the glass dish.
- The half-hour of whippingWhipping "a spoonful at a time, from half an hour to an hour" is not exaggeration. Cold gelatine added slowly to stiff whites and beaten by hand builds a foam stable enough to unmold; the long, steady beating is the whole technique behind every dish of this family.
Whipped gelatine desserts like this were a Victorian showpiece made possible by commercial packaged gelatine, which spread through the middle of the century, though calf's-foot jelly recipes persisted in cookbooks for decades alongside it. The result is essentially a snow pudding or Spanish cream turned out as "snow-balls" and ringed with thin custard \œufs à la neige, but set firm instead of poached. The attribution to Mrs. Gov. Thayer of Wyoming Territory is characteristic of the era's cookbooks, which solicited contributions from the wives of governors, senators and clergymen; John Milton Thayer served as governor of Wyoming Territory from 1875 to 1878. Such names sold books, and they also signal what a hostess of that rank was expected to serve: something white, cold, molded, and impressive out of proportion to its cost in ingredients.