No. 3152

Spanish Cream

Creme a l'Espagnole

Have eight egg-yolks in a vessel and mix in with them eight ounces of sugar; dilute with a quart of boiling milk, thicken on the fire, and remove at once to add to it two ounces of gelatine softened in cold water; leave it to cool off partly; now strain it into a tin basin, adding about half a pint of fine apricot marmalade (No. 3675), diluted with a gill of rum. Have this preparation thicken on ice, mixing in with it one pint of whipped cream, and then pour it immediately into a jelly mold incrusted on ice. Unmold the cream when ready, and surround the base with triangular cuts of sweet jelly (No. 106).

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For the Modern Kitchen

This is a Bavarian cream in all but name: a stirred custard set with gelatine, flavoured with apricot and rum, and lightened with whipped cream. Ranhofer assumes a cook who knows the sequence, so the timing cues matter more than the quantities.

The hinge: fold the cream at the right momentThe custard must be cold and thickening — syrupy, just beginning to hold a trace — before the whipped cream goes in. Fold too early and the cream melts and the mixture separates into a jelly layer under a foam layer; too late and it sets in lumps you cannot smooth out.
"Thicken on the fire"This is a stirred custard: cook over moderate heat, stirring constantly, until it coats the back of a spoon, about 175-180F. It must not boil or the yolks curdle. Off the heat immediately, as written, so the residual heat dissolves the gelatine rather than scrambling the eggs.
Gelatine quantityTwo ounces is more than a modern cook would use. Nineteenth-century gelatine was far less standardised than today's leaf or powder and may well have been weaker, so a straight conversion is not possible. Judge by modern practice for a quart-plus of liquid rather than by the stated weight, or the result will be rubbery.
A gillHalf a cup, so a gill of rum in a dessert of this size. Use a dark or aged rum; the alcohol is not cooked off, which is worth knowing if you are serving children.
Apricot marmaladeRanhofer's No. 3675 is an apricot marmalade in the older sense: a sieved fruit preserve, not a citrus-style marmalade with peel. A good apricot jam pushed through a fine sieve stands in.
"Incrusted on ice"The mold is packed round with crushed ice so it chills from all sides. The recipe calls for no salt, and freezing is not wanted, as ice crystals ruin the texture. A refrigerator does the same work in a few hours.
UnmoldingDip the mold in warm — not hot — water for a few seconds, wipe it, and invert onto a chilled plate. The rum and fruit make this a soft set, so it will slump if it stands warm.
YieldA quart of milk, a pint of cream and eight yolks fills a two-quart mold and serves ten to twelve. The triangular cuts of clear jelly around the base are decoration, and the dish is complete without them.

A Little History

The Epicurean (1894) is Charles Ranhofer's record of his years cooking at Delmonico's in New York, and this entry shows the house method rather than any Spanish origin: crème à l'espagnole belongs to the French repertoire of molded creams, where national names — à l'espagnole, à la napolitaine, à la russe — often signalled a flavouring or a garnish rather than a provenance. Here the Spanish note is presumably the apricot and rum. Confusingly, the same English name attached in nineteenth-century American household books to a much plainer dessert of milk, eggs and gelatine, often served in a glass dish and quite unlike this one; Ranhofer's version is a full Bavarian cream, built on a cooked custard and finished with whipped cream, and it depended on a reliable supply of ice.