No. 3162

Bain-Marie Cream with Virgin Coffee

Creme Bain-Marie au Cafe Vierge

Torrefy half a pound of coffee and when done throw it into a saucepan containing a quart of boiling milk; close hermetically and leave to infuse for half an hour. Then pass the milk through a fine sieve and add to it a gill of rich cream. Put eight yolks and six whole eggs into another vessel, beat them with half a pound of sugar and dilute with the infusion of coffee; strain this preparation two or three times through a wire sieve and then pour it into a lightly buttered and sugared timbale mold. Bake the cream for an hour and a quarter in a bain-marie in a slack oven and as soon as done remove and leave it to cool in the water of the bain-marie. When ready to serve detach it all around with the blade of a small knife, invert it on a cold dish and pour over an English cream (No. 42) prepared with coffee.

← No. 3161 Custard or Bain-Marie Cream with Caramel Cold Entremets — Creams, Jellies & Charlottes No. 3163 Snow Eggs or Floating Islands →

For the Modern Kitchen

A baked custard flavoured by infusing freshly roasted coffee beans in hot milk — Ranhofer's "virgin coffee" means beans roasted for the purpose and infused whole, not ground and brewed. The technique is sound; the vocabulary and the oven need translating.

TorrefySimply to roast. Half a pound (225 g) of coffee, roasted and then added hot to the milk; Ranhofer does not say whether the beans go in whole or broken. Whole roasted beans from a good roaster, still fresh, will serve; cracking them coarsely rather than grinding to powder avoids clouding and over-extracting the milk.
Close hermeticallyCover tightly and leave to infuse for the 30 minutes directed; the point is to trap the aromatics rather than to go on cooking, and a lid with a sheet of foil under it will do. A much longer infusion risks bitterness.
A gillHalf a cup, 4 fl oz, about 120 ml of heavy cream.
Slack ovenRoughly 300°F / 150°C; Ranhofer gives no figure. The custard is eight yolks and six whole eggs to a quart of milk plus a gill of cream, so it wants a low oven — pushed much hotter, the bath boils and the custard is liable to curdle before the centre sets.
Timbale moldA plain, straight-sided mould large enough to take the quart of infused milk plus cream and eggs with a little headroom; Ranhofer gives no capacity. Butter and sugar it as written, which helps the cream turn out cleanly when inverted.
The hingeCooling it in the bain-marie water, as directed. Custard this rich carries on setting from residual heat, and a slow cool helps keep the surface from splitting and weeping. It should be thoroughly cold before you attempt to unmould it.
DonenessAn hour and a quarter is a guide, not a rule. The centre should register 175–180°F / 80°C, or wobble as a single mass when the mould is nudged. Straining two or three times, as directed, is not fussiness — it removes chalazae and cooked albumen and is the difference between a silky cream and a grainy one.
The sauceNo. 42 is Ranhofer's English cream, a stirred custard of yolks, sugar and milk; here he directs it be prepared with coffee, without saying how the coffee is introduced.
YieldOn the quantities given, probably eight to ten portions as a cold entremets. Best eaten the day it is made.

A Little History

Charles Ranhofer, chef of Delmonico's in New York for some three decades, published The Epicurean in 1894 as an exhaustive record of what a first-class American restaurant kitchen could produce, and the recipe for café vierge sits in a long run of bain-marie creams distinguished only by their flavouring: caramel, vanilla, chocolate, coffee. The bain-marie itself is generally traced to alchemical practice and named for a Maria said to have been an early alchemist; by Ranhofer's day it was simply the standard means of giving a custard gentle, even heat.