No. 3149

Cream Bain-Marie-Molded

Creme au Bain-Marie Moulee

Put into a bright copper pan two spoonfuls of powdered sugar, stir it on a slow fire until it becomes a fine yellow color, then pour it into the bottom of a low charlotte mold and let get cold. Break seven or eight eggs in a bowl with five or six yolks; beat them up for two minutes, then dilute with a quart of milk, adding ten ounces of powdered sugar and a little lemon peel. Ten minutes later strain it twice through a sieve. Butter the sides of the mold, pour the preparation in, place it in a saucepan on a small trivet and pour hot water around to reach up to half the height of the mold, then bring to a boil; remove the saucepan to a slower fire, and cover it over; place some hot cinders on the saucepan lid and let poach for one hour at least without allowing the water to boil. Remove the saucepan and let the cream get partly cold before taking it from the water, then unmold on a dish.

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For the Modern Kitchen

This is a crème caramel — a baked custard turned out of its caramel-lined mold — cooked on the stovetop in a water bath because Ranhofer's ranges gave better control there than in a coal oven. The whole thing hinges on the water never boiling.

Keep the water below a simmerThe instruction to bring the water bath to a boil and then move it to slower heat is the one line that matters: once the water boils, the custard curdles and weeps. Hold the bath at 170–180F and the custard sets smooth.
Modern equivalent of the cindersHot cinders on the lid supplied gentle heat from above. A 325F oven with the mold standing in a roasting pan of hot water does the same job; count on about an hour to an hour and a quarter, and pull it when the center still trembles as a single mass.
"Two spoonfuls" for the caramelRead this as two generous tablespoons of sugar, melted dry until it colours -- Ranhofer says a fine yellow -- then poured straight into the mold. It will set hard and dissolve into sauce as the custard bakes.
Powdered sugarIn 1894 this meant granulated sugar ground fine, not today's confectioners' sugar with its cornstarch. Use ordinary granulated: ten ounces is about 1 1/3 cups.
The copper panUntinned copper was prized for caramel because it conducts evenly. Any heavy stainless or hard-anodized pan works; avoid thin aluminum, which scorches sugar in patches.
Eggs and volumeSeven or eight whole eggs plus five or six extra yolks to a quart of milk gives a firm custard that will stand unmolded -- richer and stiffer than a modern flan. Eggs of the period were less standardised and may have run smaller than today's large, so the lower end of each range is the safer choice.
Mold sizeA low charlotte mold of at least 2 quarts is needed; the batter comes to something over 1 1/2 quarts and must not reach the rim. Butter only the sides, as directed -- the base stays bare so the caramel releases.
Lemon peelPare the zest in strips with no white pith. Ranhofer adds it to the mixture with the sugar and strains it out ten minutes later. Straining twice, as he says, removes chalazae and foam and is worth doing.
Unmolding and yieldLet it cool in the water bath and unmold once it is partly cold, as directed; a warm custard will slump. Serves eight to ten.

A Little History

The Epicurean (1894) is Charles Ranhofer's record of the kitchen he ran at Delmonico's in New York for more than thirty years, and its dessert chapters are essentially French pastry practice transplanted to Manhattan. A crème au bain-marie moulée is what French kitchens more often call crème renversée au caramel — the same family as Spanish flan and Italian crema caramella — and it appears here in the standard bourgeois form of the period: whole eggs reinforced with extra yolks so the custard will hold its shape when reversed onto a dish. The bain-marie itself, the water bath that keeps a sauce or custard below boiling, takes its name traditionally from Maria the Jewess, an alchemist of late antiquity credited with the apparatus; cooks borrowed both the device and the name from the laboratory. Ranhofer's direction to bank hot cinders on the lid is a reminder that this was written for a coal range, where a cook regulated heat by moving pots and shifting embers rather than by turning a dial.