No. 3135

Vanilla Bavarois

Bavarois a la Vanille

Boil one pint of milk with half a split vanilla bean. Whip four egg-yolks well in basin with six ounces of sugar, dilute them with the boiling milk, and pour the whole into a saucepan to stir over a moderate fire without letting it boil. Remove the cream from the fire as soon as it thickens, take out the vanilla, and add two gelatine leaves (one ounce) previously softened in cold water. When this is melted pass the whole through a fine wire sieve into a tin basin and leave to cool on ice. As it begins to thicken mix in about three pints of cream, whipped and drained. Fill a jelly mold (Fig. 149) incrusted on ice with this, put on it a round of paper, and then let the bavarois harden for two hours. At the last moment dip the mold in hot water, and invert it on a cold dish.

← No. 3134 Raspberry Bavarois Cold Entremets — Creams, Jellies & Charlottes No. 3136 Bavarois with Chestnuts →

For the Modern Kitchen

A classic stirred custard set with gelatine and lightened with whipped cream. The proportions are generous — this is a banquet mold, not a family dessert — and the two places it can fail are the custard and the gelatine.

The hinge: never let the custard boilCook the milk-and-yolk mixture over moderate heat, stirring constantly, until it coats the back of a spoon — about 175–180°F. A few degrees more and the yolks scramble; the sieve will catch small curds but not a broken custard.
Gelatine is the ambiguous measure"Two gelatine leaves (one ounce)" implies a sheet far heavier than today's, though Ranhofer's parenthetical is the only guide we have. Modern leaves weigh roughly 2-3 g each, so two of them are nowhere near an ounce. Going by the weight, 28 g of gelatine for the two quarts of liquid here (a pint of milk plus three pints of cream) gives a firm, sliceable set — appropriate for a molded centerpiece. Scale down if you prefer a spoonable cream, and bloom sheets in cold water, powder in a little cold liquid, before stirring into the hot custard.
"Whipped and drained" creamWhip the cream to soft peaks and let it stand in a sieve for a few minutes; the loose liquid that separates would thin the set. Fold it in only when the custard has cooled to the point of thickening — too warm and the cream melts, too cold and the base seizes into lumps.
"Incrusted on ice"The mold was packed in crushed ice to chill it hard before filling. A refrigerator does the same work; chill the mold thoroughly first, and count on three to four hours rather than the two Ranhofer allows for an ice-packed mold.
The round of paperA disc of parchment pressed on the surface keeps a skin from forming and stops the exposed cream from picking up other flavors. Plastic wrap does the job.
UnmoldingDip the mold in hot water for five to ten seconds only, wipe it, and invert onto a chilled plate. Longer and the outer quarter-inch melts and slumps.
The vanillaHalf a split bean steeped in a pint of hot milk is plenty; the recipe has you steep the bean and then lift it out. A teaspoon or two of extract, stirred in off the heat, is the substitute.
YieldRoughly two and a half quarts of finished cream — a two-quart-plus mold serving twelve to sixteen. Halve everything for a household dessert.

A Little History

Charles Ranhofer ran the kitchens at Delmonico's in New York for over thirty years, and The Epicurean (1894) is essentially the restaurant's working repertoire set down in a thousand-page volume. The bavarois — fromage bavarois in older French usage, Bavarian cream in English — is a custard set with gelatine and enriched with whipped cream, and its name is generally traced to French chefs who worked for the Wittelsbach court in Bavaria in the eighteenth century, though the connection is traditional rather than documented. Carême codified the form in the early nineteenth century, and by Ranhofer's day it was a fixed part of the cold entremets service: turned out of an ornamented mold, set on a cold dish, and carried to table as one of several sweets. The numbered variations around this entry — raspberry and chestnut among them — show how the base custard functioned as a template rather than a single dish.