No. 3145

Charlotte Russe

Lay a round sheet of white paper at the bottom of a charlotte mold and line it all around with well-pared lady fingers (No. 3377). Boil a pint of milk with half a split vanilla bean; beat up in a vessel six egg-yolks with six ounces of sugar and dilute the preparation with the boiling milk; pour it at once into the saucepan and thicken over a moderate fire without letting it come to a boil. Then take out the vanilla and add two leaves of gelatine softened in cold water then melted in a grill of boiling water. Run the whole through a fine Chinese strainer into a vessel and leave to cool until it begins to thicken slightly. Then mix with it the volume of three pints of whipped cream and pouring it at once into the charlotte mold cover with another round of paper and place the mold on ice for an hour and a half. When ready to use invert the charlotte on a cold dish covered with a napkin, remove the upper paper and place on top a cover, made with the same paste as the lady fingers, cut the same dimension as the charlotte, icing it with a white vanilla icing (No. 102) and decorate with a handsome design of preserved fruits or with royal icing.

← No. 3144 Charlotte a la Metternich Cold Entremets — Creams, Jellies & Charlottes No. 3146 Charlotte with Strawberries or Raspberries →

For the Modern Kitchen

This is a vanilla Bavarian cream set inside a wall of ladyfingers — the custard and the gelatine do all the work, so the two things to watch are the temperature of the custard and the stiffness of the cream when the two are married.

The hinge: do not boil the custardSix yolks to a pint of milk thickens between about 175 and 180F, at which point it coats a spoon. Past that the yolks scramble and no amount of straining through the chinois will save the texture.
"A grill of boiling water"The phrase is obscure. It may render a bain-marie, a small vessel set over hot water, or it may be a misprint for a "gill" of boiling water in which to dissolve the gelatine. Either way, softened gelatine melts at about 100F and needs no more heat than that.
Gelatine leavesNineteenth-century sheet gelatine varied widely in size and strength, and two leaves looks light for this volume, though the thick custard and the whipped cream carry much of the structure. Modern platinum sheets run about 1.7 g each; 4 to 5 sheets, or a scant tablespoon of powdered gelatine bloomed in cold water, would give a firmer set.
"The volume of three pints of whipped cream"Three pints measured after whipping, not before — roughly 1.5 pints (700 ml) of heavy cream beaten to soft peaks. Fold it in when the custard is cool and just beginning to thicken; too warm and the cream deflates, too set and it will streak.
Chinese strainerA chinois, the conical fine-mesh strainer. Any fine sieve does the same job, and this step is worth keeping — it catches vanilla seeds, egg thread and undissolved gelatine.
The mold and the paperA charlotte mold is a deep tin with slightly flared sides; given the quantities here it needs to hold about 2 quarts. The rounds of white paper are cut to fit top and bottom; they keep the surfaces clean and make unmolding straightforward.
Setting timeAn hour and a half packed in ice is faster than a modern refrigerator manages. Allow 4 hours at 40F, or overnight, and unmold onto a chilled plate.
Ladyfingers and the lid"Well-pared" means trimmed square so the fingers stand flush against each other with no gaps for cream to seep through. The iced disc of ladyfinger batter on top is decoration only and can be skipped without harming the dessert.
YieldServes 10 to 12. It is best cut with a thin knife dipped in hot water and wiped between slices.

A Little History

Charlotte russe belongs to the early nineteenth-century French repertoire and is generally traced to Antonin Carême, who is said to have adapted the older baked apple charlotte into a cold form lined with biscuits and filled with bavarois — the "russe" usually explained by Carême's period in the service of Tsar Alexander I, though the story is traditional rather than documented. By the time Charles Ranhofer set it down in The Epicurean (1894), the dish had become a fixture of grand hotel and restaurant service in New York, precisely because it suited that kind of kitchen: it is built in advance, it holds on ice, and it comes to the table needing nothing but an inverted mold and a napkin. Ranhofer's cross-references to numbered ladyfingers and numbered icings are the mark of a Delmonico's system in which a single dessert drew on half a dozen standing preparations already at hand.