No. 3131

Chocolate Bavarois

Bavarois au Chocolat

Make an English cream with a pint of milk, four egg-yolks, four ounces of sugar, and half a vanilla bean, proceeding the same as for No. 3135; as soon as finished pour it slowly over two ounces of chocolate dissolved in a few spoonfuls of water, then add one ounce of gelatine melted in a little water. As soon as the chocolate and gelatine are both well dissolved strain the whole through a fine strainer into a tin basin and set it on the ice, stirring constantly until cold, and when it begins to thicken take it off and incorporate three pints of whipped cream, having it firm and well drained. Fill a jelly mold incrusted on ice with this preparation; let the bavarois harden for two hours, and when serving dip the mold quickly into hot water and invert on a cold dish.

← No. 3130 Baskets of Oranges with Jelly Cold Entremets — Creams, Jellies & Charlottes No. 3132 Bavarois in Surprise →

For the Modern Kitchen

A classic bavarois: crème anglaise set with gelatine and lightened with whipped cream. Two things decide whether it works — the custard must be cooked to the right point and no further, and the cream must go in when the base is thickening but still fluid.

The hinge: fold at the right momentThe base must be cooled and stirred until it just begins to thicken, then the cream folded in at once. Too warm and the cream deflates into soup; too cold and the gelatine sets in lumps you cannot smooth out.
"English cream"Crème anglaise. Cook the milk, yolks, sugar and split vanilla bean over low heat, stirring, until it coats a spoon — 175–180°F. Above about 185°F the yolks curdle.
GelatineRanhofer does not specify the form. Nineteenth-century gelatine varied in strength and was not standardised the way modern powder is, so an ounce here should not be read as an ounce of modern gelatin. Roughly half an ounce (two envelopes, about 14 g) will give a soft, sliceable set for this quantity; a full ounce of modern gelatin is likely to give a bouncy, rubbery result. Bloom it in cold water first.
Three pints of whipped creamThat is the volume after whipping, not before — about 1½ pints (3 cups) of heavy cream, whipped to soft-firm peaks. "Well drained" means the whipped cream has been left in a sieve so no free liquid goes into the mixture.
The chocolateRanhofer's two ounces is most likely plain block chocolate of the period, more bitter and less smooth than anything sold as eating chocolate now. Use 2 oz unsweetened or 99% chocolate; if you substitute bittersweet, cut the sugar in the custard.
VesselsA "tin basin" is simply a metal mixing bowl — metal because it chills fast in the ice bath. A mold "incrusted on ice" is one packed around with ice, usually with salt; a refrigerator will do the same job, though it chills less aggressively and will need longer than the two hours Ranhofer allows.
UnmoldingDip the mold in hot water for three to five seconds only, wipe it, and invert. Longer and the outer quarter-inch melts and the ridges of the mold blur.
YieldAbout two quarts of finished cream — 12 to 16 servings. Halve the whole recipe for a household-sized mold.

A Little History

The bavarois or Bavarian cream is generally traced to the early nineteenth-century French kitchen rather than to Bavaria itself; Carême codified it, and by the time Charles Ranhofer set down The Epicurean in 1894 after decades as chef at Delmonico's in New York it was a standing item of the cold entremets course, run through dozens of flavours — vanilla, coffee, strawberry, chocolate, and the trick versions like the "Bavarois in Surprise" that follows it here. Chocolate was the newest of these in spirit: cheap steam-milled cocoa and eating chocolate arrived over the course of the century, and a chocolate cream that would once have read as a luxury of the cup had become, by Ranhofer's day, an unremarkable option on a long list. The cross-reference to No. 3135 is characteristic of the book, which assumes a brigade cook working through a numbered system rather than a home reader following one page.