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Whipped Cream (One and one-half pints good)
One and one-half pints good rich cream sweetened and flavored to taste, three tea-spoons vanilla; whip to a stiff froth. Dissolve three-fourths ounce best gelatine in a small tea-cup hot water, and when cool pour into the cream; stir thoroughly, pour in molds and set on ice, or in very cool place. - Mrs. Emma Craig, Washington, D. C.
A molded whipped-cream dessert of the sort that stood or fell on the gelatine. The original assumes shred or sheet gelatine sold by weight and a cook who knew how to fold it in without lumps.
- The hinge: temperatureThe dissolved gelatine must be cool to the touch but still fluid, and it should be poured into the whipped cream in a thin stream while you fold. Too hot and it deflates the cream; too cool and it sets into rubbery threads that will not disperse.
- Gelatine quantityThree-quarters of an ounce is about 21 g, roughly three 1/4-oz envelopes of modern powdered gelatine. That is a firm, sliceable set for three cups of cream; for a softer spoonable cream, two envelopes is closer to current taste. Modern powder should be sprinkled over cold water to bloom for five minutes before the hot water dissolves it.
- "Small tea-cup" of waterRead it as about 1/2 cup. The exact volume matters less than getting every granule dissolved and clear.
- Cream"Good rich cream" would have been unhomogenized and was probably richer than today's standard whipping cream, though period cream was not standardised and no fat figure can be assumed. Use heavy whipping cream at 36 percent or higher, thoroughly chilled, and stop whipping at stiff peaks rather than beating on into butter.
- Sweetening and vanillaNo quantity is given for sugar; 1/4 to 1/3 cup of superfine sugar per pint and a half suits most palates. Three teaspoons of vanilla is a generous amount by modern standards, possibly because period extracts were less concentrated. With modern extract, start at one teaspoon.
- "Set on ice"Packed against ice, or failing that the cool place the recipe offers as an alternative. Refrigerate at least four hours, or overnight for a clean unmolding.
- MoldsRinse the mold with cold water or wipe it with a trace of neutral oil. To turn out, dip the base in warm water for a few seconds and invert onto a chilled plate.
- YieldThree cups of cream whips to roughly six cups; the mold serves six to eight.
This is the plain American relative of the Bavarian cream — whipped cream held in shape by gelatine, without the egg custard base a French kitchen would have insisted on. Recipes like it became practical for home cooks as commercial gelatine got reliable: a cook wanting a molded cream might once have had to boil calves' feet or isinglass and clarify the result, while by the 1880s shredded and sheet gelatine could be bought by the ounce at the grocer's, which is exactly how this recipe measures it. The Dixie Cook-Book was assembled from contributed receipts, and the attribution to Mrs. Emma Craig of Washington, D.C., is typical of the form.