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Charlotte Russe with Strawberries
Pick off stems, wash and thoroughly drain thirty-six medium, fine fresh sound strawberries, place in a bowl, season with two tablespoons sugar, one tablespoon rum, and carefully turn in seasoning. Prepare and decorate six charlottes russe, arrange six strawberries around base of each and serve.
This is a finishing instruction rather than a full recipe: the charlottes themselves are assumed to have been made from an earlier entry in the book. Everything here is about the berries and the plating.
- What a charlotte russe is hereNot the American soda-fountain sponge cup with whipped cream, but the classic moulded dessert: a mould lined with ladyfingers (or strips of sponge) and filled with Bavarian cream — custard set with gelatine and lightened with whipped cream. "Six charlottes russe" here appears to mean six small individual moulds, since six berries are ranged around the base of each.
- Macerating the berriesTwo tablespoons sugar and one tablespoon rum for thirty-six berries is a light hand, meant to gloss rather than macerate. Give them 15 to 20 minutes at room temperature, no more; strawberries left sitting in sugar collapse and weep syrup that will slump against the cream.
- "Carefully turn in seasoning"Fold with a rubber spatula or lift the bowl and toss, rather than stirring. Bruised berries bleed and the pale ladyfinger wall stains immediately.
- Drain them dryThe instruction to drain thoroughly is the hinge. Wet or syrupy fruit sitting against a gelatine-set cream softens the sponge and can slacken the base. Blot the berries on a towel before they go near the plate.
- RumA dark or gold rum, not spiced or overproof. If you are serving children, substitute an equal amount of orange juice with a few drops of vanilla; the sugar will still draw enough juice for the glossy look.
- Timing of assemblyUnmould and decorate as close to service as possible. A gelatine-set cream needs a long chill to firm up before unmoulding, but the berries should be added at the last moment.
- YieldSix individual desserts, six berries each. Buy well over the thirty-six you need so you can pick out sound berries of even size.
The charlotte russe is generally traced to Antonin Carême, who is said to have adapted the older English apple charlotte — a hot pudding lined with buttered bread — into a cold moulded dessert lined with ladyfingers and filled with Bavarian cream, giving it the name "russe" in the era when Carême's employers and patrons included the Russian court. By the turn of the twentieth century it was standard restaurant work in New York and Paris, which is why a book of this sort can dispose of it in a five-word clause — "Prepare and decorate six charlottes russe" — and spend its whole entry on the garnish: the kitchen was expected to know the mould, the lining and the cream already. The precision of "thirty-six medium, fine fresh sound strawberries" reflects a tendency in professional American cookbooks of the period, written for chefs plating a fixed number of covers rather than for a home cook working from a bowl of whatever fruit was ripe.