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The Chantilly Custard
The plates from 1 to 4, inclusive, show the manner of making the Gatian for the custard, which is thus described: First, procure a mold for sponge-cake or jelly, about one quart or three pints size, with a fancy fruit or flower top (see plate No. 1). Bake in this a cake or sponge mixture (or plain pound mixture, if you prefer it), and when baked and cold-it is all the better if kept for a day or two-cut off the top (see figures 2 and 3), and ice it with thin, white icing. When thoroughly dry, lightly color the different fruits or flowers with their natural colors. Do not lay on the colors too heavily, or they will spoil the effect Next cut out the center of the cake (see figure 4), and fill the cavity thus made with a boiled custard, adding chopped almonds to the custard according to taste. When the custard is set and cold replace the top (as in figure 3), and pipe the outside of the cake in any way you may choose, following the design here given, or selecting from the design for dessert cake, or from page of diagrams. The light and dark balls at the bottom of the present design are intended to represent pink and yellow pastilles placed alternately (see figure 6). But a much easier, cheaper, handier, and more effective mode of adding these balls, which is simply to stick on gumdrops of the alternate colors. If you can procure a good, clear white gumdrop, then use the three colors alternately-red, yellow, white-and the effect is capital.
The beauty of such a piece of work, amply repays any lady who has the time and taste, for the trouble of mastering the accomplishment, and for the small cost of material. The cost of the latter, when compared with the prices which would be charged by a professional caterer for a similar piece of work, is very small.
This is an assembly and decorating project rather than a formula: no quantities are given for cake or custard, so bring your own trusted recipes and use this text for the construction sequence. The hinge is the custard, which must be fully set and cold before the lid goes back on, or it will soak the cake and collapse the piping.
- "Gatian"Apparently a phonetic rendering of gâteau. Here it means the hollowed, iced cake shell that holds the custard, not a separate preparation.
- Mold sizeOne quart to three pints is roughly 4 to 6 cups, so a standard 6-cup fluted tube or kugelhopf mold is the modern equivalent. The "fancy fruit or flower top" is the molded relief pattern on what will become the lid once the cake is inverted.
- Sponge or pound mixtureA firm butter cake carves far better than a foam sponge. Whatever you bake, follow the instruction to let it stand a day or two: fresh cake tears when you cut the lid and hollow the center.
- Thin, white icingPeriod "thin white icing" for this purpose is a flat glacé icing — confectioners' sugar slackened with water or egg white to a pourable consistency — poured over the molded top so it settles into the pattern without filling it. Let it dry hard before painting.
- Coloring the fruits and flowersUse modern gel or paste food colors thinned with a drop of clear alcohol, painted on with a fine brush. Nineteenth-century decorators sometimes reached for pigments that were not food-safe; the advice to lay color on lightly still holds, both for the effect and because thinned color dries without streaking.
- Hollowing the shellLeave at least three-quarters of an inch of cake at the sides and base. The trimmings are worth keeping for trifle.
- The boiled custardA stirred crème anglaise, cooked to 170–175°F until it coats a spoon, then cooled. At that consistency it will not hold in a cut cavity, so either set it with a little gelatin or use a pastry-cream style custard thickened with cornstarch or flour, which some period cooks did.
- Pastilles and gumdropsPastilles were hard sugar drops sold by confectioners; the author's own suggestion of gumdrops is the practical one. Press them into a dab of icing to fix them at the base.
- Serving and keepingA 6-cup mold serves eight to ten. Because it is filled with custard it must be refrigerated and eaten within a day or two, which argues for decorating the shell in advance and filling it the morning it is wanted.
The name borrows the prestige of Chantilly, the French estate whose kitchens are traditionally said to have given their name to sweetened whipped cream, though the filling here is a boiled custard rather than cream. Instructions like this belong to the late-Victorian vogue for ornamental confectionery: piped royal icing, molded gum paste and hand-painted decoration were the visible proof of a genteel accomplishment. The closing note \u though what a caterer would charge — is the whole argument of the section, and of The Dixie Cook Book generally, a compendium assembled in the 1880s for households that wanted a showpiece table without a professional pastry cook. The plate numbers referred to throughout point to engraved diagrams that accompanied the text, a reminder that decorating instruction of this period depended on pictures the modern reader usually no longer has.