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Bavarois Chocolate
Place in a saucepan one pint milk with a teaspoon vanilla essence and two ounces grated chocolate; set the pan on the fire and mix with a wooden spoon until it comes to a boil. Have three egg yolks in a small saucepan with three ounces fine sugar and gradually mix with the milk; stir gently on the fire while heating, but not boiling, for five minutes. Add one ounce leaf gelatin and continually stir until dissolved; then pass through a Chinese strainer into a clean copper basin; set the basin on the ice and briskly mix with a wooden spoon until it begins to thicken, then add two gills whipped cream and gently mix for a minute. Pour the preparation into a jelly mould. Tightly cover the mould and bury it in a tub with broken ice and rock salt for two hours. Remove, immerse the mould in water for one minute; unmould the bavarois on a cold dish with folded napkin and serve.
A classic Bavarian cream, written for a kitchen with a coal range, a copper basin and a supply of block ice. The method survives intact; only the equipment and a few quantities need translating.
- The hinge: custard temperatureThe custard must thicken without boiling — around 175-180F on a thermometer, when it coats the spoon. Past that the yolks scramble and no amount of straining will save the texture.
- Gills and ouncesA gill is half a cup, so two gills of whipped cream is about one cup; the original does not make clear whether that is measured before or after whipping. Three ounces of sugar is a scant half cup; two ounces of grated chocolate is roughly a half cup, depending how finely it is grated.
- Leaf gelatinLeaf gelatin of this period varied a good deal in strength and was probably weaker than modern standardised sheets or powder; 28 g of today's gelatin in this quantity of liquid would almost certainly set rubbery. Modern practice for a pint of custard plus a cup of cream is roughly 4 to 5 sheets of platinum-grade leaf, or about 2 1/2 teaspoons of powdered gelatin bloomed in cold water first.
- Chocolate"Grated chocolate" here means plain unsweetened or barely sweetened block chocolate — the sugar is added separately with the yolks. Use unsweetened or 70% and keep the three ounces of sugar; if you substitute a sweet eating chocolate, cut the sugar back.
- Chinese strainerA chinois, the fine conical sieve. Any fine-mesh strainer does the job; the point is to catch any threads of cooked egg and undissolved gelatin.
- Copper basin on iceThe metal bowl over ice is not decorative — it chills the custard fast so the gelatin begins to set just as the cream goes in. Stir until it has the body of unwhipped cream, then fold; too thin and the cream separates out, too thick and it will not fold in smoothly.
- Setting without an ice tubIce and rock salt drove the mould below freezing point, which is why two hours sufficed. Covered in the refrigerator, allow 4 to 6 hours or overnight.
- UnmouldingThe original says immerse the mould in water for one minute; a brief dip in tepid or warm water, then invert onto the cold dish, is the usual modern reading. Left too long the outer layer melts to slush.
- YieldAbout 1 1/2 pints of finished cream — six modest servings from a single mould.
Bavarois is one of the fixed items of nineteenth-century French professional cookery: a sweetened egg custard set with gelatin and lightened with whipped cream, moulded and turned out. Older French cookbooks call it fromage bavarois, "Bavarian cheese," the cheese referring to the moulded shape rather than to any dairy curd, and the Bavarian connection is generally traced to French chefs employed in German courts in the eighteenth century — a traditional attribution rather than a documented one. Its appearance in a turn-of-the-century international collection reflects how thoroughly the restaurant repertoire of Paris and New York had absorbed the form: vanilla, coffee, strawberry and chocolate bavarois were standard. The instruction to bury the mould in ice and rock salt points to a kitchen that still relied on delivered block ice, salt being the only way to push a brine below the freezing point.