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Spanish Cream
One box Coxe's gelatine dissolved in a pint of cold milk; into two quarts boiling milk stir one and a half cups sugar and the yolks of eight eggs; pour all upon the dissolved gelatine, stirring well. When cool add half a pint wine, or flavor with lemon or vanilla, place in dishes and cover with a meringue made of the beaten whites, the juice of one lemon, and one cup sugar; brown in oven two minutes and eat ice-cold. - Susan R. Howard, Brooklyn, New York.
A gelatine-set custard scaled for a large table, with a meringue lid. The main adjustments are the gelatine measure, the custard temperature, and the fact that a two-minute browning does not cook the egg whites.
- Scale it downTwo and a half quarts of milk and eight yolks will serve sixteen to twenty. Halving or quartering the whole thing loses nothing.
- Coxe's gelatineA box of the sparkling gelatine sold under this name; period boxes are usually reckoned at about an ounce, roughly four modern quarter-ounce envelopes, a little over 3 tablespoons of granules. Against ten cups of milk that gives a soft, spoonable set rather than a firm moulded one, which suits this recipe, since it directs you to 'place in dishes.'
- Bloom, don't boilThe gelatine goes into cold milk to swell, then the hot custard is poured over it. Gelatine loses strength if it is boiled, so nothing should return to the heat once they are combined.
- The custard is the hingeStirring eight yolks into two quarts of boiling milk will scramble them unless you temper: ladle some hot milk into the yolks and sugar first, then return the mixture and hold it at 170-180F, stirring, until it coats a spoon. It must not simmer.
- Half a pint of wineOne cup. Sherry or madeira is the likely choice; as the recipe says, add it only when the custard is cool, since heat can thin the set.
- The meringue is essentially rawTwo minutes of browning colours the surface and no more. Beaten whites folded with lemon juice and sugar and then served ice-cold never reach a temperature that pasteurises them, which matters if anyone at the table is elderly, pregnant or immunocompromised. Pasteurised whites are the sensible substitute; a cooked meringue is the other option.
- Browning"brown in oven two minutes" implies a very hot oven; the book gives no temperature. A broiler on high, watched constantly, does the same job in about the same time.
- Setting timeThe custard needs several hours in the refrigerator, preferably overnight, to set firm. Note that the recipe's own order is to dish it, cover it with the meringue and brown it, then serve ice-cold; "eat ice-cold" is not a flourish, since warm it is soup.
Spanish cream belongs to the great nineteenth-century family of gelatine desserts that arrived once commercial sheet and granulated gelatine made the old labour of boiling calves' feet unnecessary. The name of one brand appears so often in period cookbooks that "a box of Coxe's" functioned as a unit of measure. The dish itself is a custard and a milk jelly at once: yolks for richness, gelatine for body, the whites turned into a meringue so nothing is wasted. The name is traditional rather than geographic; "Spanish" attached itself to a number of sweetened, wine-flavoured creams in English and American cookery without much evidence of Iberian origin. Its appearance here, credited to Susan R. Howard of Brooklyn, is characteristic of The Dixie Cook Book, which gathered contributions from named housekeepers well outside the South and printed them with the attribution intact.