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Italian Cream
E. V. Case.
Take one quart of cream, one pint of milk sweetened very sweet, and highly seasoned with sherry wine and vanilla; beat it with a whip dasher, and remove the froth as it rises until it is all converted into froth. Have ready one box of Coxe's sparkling gelatine dissolved in a little warm water; set your frothed cream into a tub of ice; pour the gelatine into it, and stir constantly until it thickens, then pour into moulds, and set ir a cool place.
A moulded gelatin cream from the era when whipped cream was skimmed off the top of a churn rather than whipped in a bowl. The technique is sound, but two details in the original need translating before you start.
- The hinge: temperature matchDissolved gelatine poured into cream sitting over ice will set in threads and lumps on contact. Have the gelatine warm but not hot, pour it in a thin stream while stirring without pause, and stop as soon as the mixture thickens to a pouring custard.
- One box of Coxe's gelatineJ. & G. Cox's Sparkling Gelatine boxes do not correspond to any standard modern measure, and the amount here is genuinely ambiguous. Modern equivalent is roughly 3 to 4 envelopes (about 3/4 to 1 oz) of unflavoured powdered gelatine for three pints of liquid, but treat that as a starting point and test a spoonful on a cold plate before moulding.
- Whip dasherA syllabub churn or dasher-type whip, worked in a deep can. The instruction to skim the froth as it rises and re-whip the liquid beneath is the old way of getting volume from a hand tool; a stand mixer or hand whisk will do the same work, whipping the cream and sweetened milk to soft peaks.
- Sweetened very sweetNo sugar quantity is given. For a quart of cream and a pint of milk, 3/4 to 1 cup of sugar suits period taste; dissolve it in the milk before whipping. Gelatin desserts taste less sweet cold than they do warm.
- Sherry and vanilla"Highly seasoned" is not quantified in the original; something in the region of 1/2 cup of sherry and a tablespoon of extract would fit. Too much alcohol weakens the set, so if you increase the sherry, increase the gelatine with it.
- Tub of iceAn ice bath. A large bowl of ice and water under the mixing bowl does the same work; the point is to chill fast enough that the froth does not collapse while you stir.
- Moulds and unmouldingRinse metal or ceramic moulds with cold water first. Chill at least four hours, ideally overnight, then dip the mould briefly in warm water and invert. "A cool place" for a nineteenth-century household meant a cellar or icebox; use the refrigerator.
- YieldThree pints of liquid, whipped, fills two quart moulds or ten to twelve small ones. It serves twelve to sixteen, and it is very rich.
"Italian cream" in nineteenth-century American and British cookbooks is not a single dish but a family of moulded creams stiffened with isinglass or gelatine and flavoured with wine — a descendant of the older whipped syllabubs and flummeries, sweetened, frothed and turned out of a shaped mould for the supper table. Its appearance here marks the moment when packaged gelatine changed what an ordinary household could attempt: J. & G. Cox of Edinburgh sold "sparkling gelatine" in boxes, and it spared cooks the long business of boiling calves' feet or clarifying isinglass. The frothing method, with its patient skimming of the risen foam, belongs to the older world of the syllabub churn, so the recipe sits squarely between hand labour and the convenience of a paper box.