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Coffee Cream
Soak half an ounce of Coxe's gelatine in a little cold water half an hour; then place it over boiling water and add one gill of strong coffee and one gill of sugar; when the gelatine is well dissolved, take from the fire; stir in three gills of cold cream and strain into your mould. Be sure that this has been previously wet with cold water.
A straightforward moulded gelatine cream, but the original assumes a vocabulary of measures and a brand of gelatine that no longer exist. The hinge is temperature: the coffee-gelatine base must be off the heat and merely warm before the cold cream goes in, or the cream will thin and the set will be grainy.
- GillsA gill is half a cup. So one gill each of coffee and sugar, three gills of cream — 1/2 cup strong coffee, 1/2 cup sugar, 1 1/2 cups cream, for about 2 1/2 cups of mixture in total.
- Sugar by volumeThe sugar is measured in a liquid measure, which is unusual to modern eyes but was normal practice. Half a cup of granulated sugar is roughly 3 1/2 oz; that is a moderately sweet dessert against strong coffee.
- Coxe's gelatineA sheet gelatine widely sold in America in the later nineteenth century; the name refers to the Edinburgh firm of J. & G. Cox, whose product American cookbooks named by brand. Half an ounce is about two 1/4-oz envelopes of modern powdered gelatine, which will set 2 1/2 cups firmly enough to unmould. If using leaf gelatine, weigh rather than count sheets, as bloom strengths vary.
- SoakingPowdered gelatine needs only five to ten minutes to bloom in cold water, not half an hour; the long soak in the original suits sheets. Use about 1/4 cup cold water and count that toward the liquid.
- Over boiling waterThis means a double boiler or a bowl set over a pan of simmering water. Gelatine dissolves at around 120-140F and should not be boiled, as prolonged boiling can weaken the set.
- Strong coffeePeriod "strong coffee" means a dark, concentrated brew rather than espresso. Double-strength drip coffee or 1/2 cup of brewed coffee reduced slightly gives the right depth without bitterness.
- The creamAdd the cold cream when the coffee base is off the heat and no more than warm, and strain as the original directs, since cold liquid meeting gelatine can leave threads or lumps.
- Wetting the mouldRinsing the mould with cold water and leaving it damp is what lets the set cream slip out. To unmould, dip the mould briefly in warm water and invert onto a chilled plate.
- Chilling and yieldNo time is given: allow at least four hours in the refrigerator, or overnight for a clean turn-out. It serves four to six as a moulded dessert.
Moulded gelatine creams were a signature of the late-Victorian American table, and they depended on a commercial product rather than a kitchen technique. Before packaged gelatine, a cook wanting a jelly boiled calves' feet or isinglass for hours and clarified the result; the appearance of measured sheet gelatine from firms such as Coxe's turned a day's labour into a half-hour job, and cookbooks of the 1870s and 1880s fill up with the results — Bavarian creams, charlottes, wine jellies and coffee creams like this one. The Home Cook Book, compiled in Chicago in the 1870s as a fundraising community cookbook, is full of such brand-specific instructions, which is itself a mark of the period: contributors named the product they trusted, though their reasons for doing so can only be guessed at. The dish belongs to the same family as the French bavarois, a custard or flavoured cream set with gelatine and lightened with whipped cream, though this version skips the egg custard entirely and is the simpler for it.