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Charlotte Russe
Prepare the same amount of ladyfingers, then line the bottom and sides of a quart pudding mould with some of the prepared ladyfingers. Place half a pint of thick, sweet cream into a basin, set the basin on ice, and with a pastry wire whisk up the cream to a stiff froth, let rest for two minutes, then remove all the whipped cream with the skimmer and place in another cold basin; add three ounces fine sugar and two teaspoons vanilla essence, and briskly whisk it up again for five minutes. Slide a fancy tube to the bottom of a pastry bag, drop in the cream, fill up the mould; then turn the charlotte upon a cold dish, and with the remaining cream in the bag neatly decorate the top and all around the charlotte and serve.
A cold charlotte with nothing but whipped cream inside it — no custard, no gelatin — so the whole thing depends on cold and on working quickly. Read the last line first: this is unmoulded and served at once, not chilled for hours.
- The hinge: no setting agentUnlike a charlotte russe built on bavarian cream, this filling is stabilized only by cold and by the biscuit shell. Chill the mould, the bowls, the dish and the cream, work fast, and turn it out immediately before serving. It will begin to slump quickly at room temperature.
- "The same amount of ladyfingers"This entry follows a ladyfinger recipe in the book and assumes you have its yield to hand. For a quart mould, count on 20 to 24 ladyfingers: trim them flat on one end, stand them upright and close around the sides with the rounded side out, and cut pieces to tile the bottom.
- Quart pudding mouldA straight-sided or slightly tapered 1-quart (about 1 litre) mould, or a 6-inch springform or charlotte tin. Line the base with a disc of parchment so the turn-out is clean.
- Half a pint of creamOne cup of heavy cream, which whips to roughly two cups. That fills a quart mould only if the biscuit lining takes up the rest of the volume, and leaves very little for the piped decoration the recipe calls for. Using 1 1/2 to 2 cups of cream is realistic.
- Sugar and vanillaThree ounces of fine sugar is a scant half cup of superfine or caster sugar; "fine" here means the grain, not confectioners' sugar. Two teaspoons of vanilla essence is two teaspoons of extract — assertive by modern standards, and worth reducing if your extract is strong.
- The rest-and-skim stepLetting the whipped cream stand two minutes and lifting it off with a skimmer leaves the thin, un-whipped liquid behind in the first basin. It is a real technique with hand-whisked cream and gives a firmer result; with a stand mixer and modern cream it is usually unnecessary.
- Second whiskingFive more minutes of brisk beating after the sugar goes in was meant for a hand whisk. With a machine, add the sugar and vanilla when the cream is at soft peaks and stop at firm peaks — a few seconds too long and it turns grainy, then buttery.
- PipingA "fancy tube" is a decorative tube; a large star tip will do. Piping rather than spooning the cream in helps pack the mould without leaving air pockets.
- YieldA quart mould will serve about six. Assemble no more than half an hour ahead and keep it in the coldest part of the refrigerator until the moment you turn it out.
The charlotte russe is generally traced to Antonin Carême, who is said to have renamed his cold charlotte à la parisienne in honour of Tsar Alexander I; the older charlotte was a hot pudding of buttered bread and apples. The Russian version keeps the lined mould but fills it cold, classically with bavarian cream — custard set with gelatin. The version here belongs to the late nineteenth-century hotel and restaurant repertoire, where a charlotte russe could be a biscuit shell packed with sweetened whipped cream from a pastry bag: fast to build, spectacular on a cold dish, and dependent on ice. The instruction to set the basin on ice, and to move the cream into a second cold basin, is not fussiness but the whole method.