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Meringue, Chantilly
Prepare twelve meringue shells. Place two gills of cream in a copper basin, set it on the ice, and beat up to a stiff froth, let rest for thirty minutes on the ice. Lift up the cream with a skimmer and place it in a bowl, add two ounces sugar, ten drops vanilla essence. Briskly beat up for two minutes. Fill in the cavity of the shells with the cream, join two together. Arrange them on six saucers. Drop the balance of the cream into a pastry bag with a fancy dentilated tube at the bottom, and with it decorate the meringues nicely and serve.
A period assembly recipe: whipped sweetened cream sandwiched between meringue shells. The meringue shells themselves are assumed to be on hand, made or bought separately.
- Two gills of creamA gill is half a cup, so this is one cup of heavy cream. It will roughly double in volume when whipped, which is enough to fill twelve shells and still pipe decoration.
- The copper basin on iceCopper was prized for whipping because it conducts cold well, not for any chemical reason here. Any metal bowl chilled in the freezer for fifteen minutes gives the same result; the point is that cream near 35F whips faster and holds better.
- The thirty-minute restThe recipe then says to lift the cream out with a skimmer, which suggests the rest is there to let loose liquid drain away so the cream stays firm on the plate. If you whip with a machine to firm peaks you can skip it, though a chilled rest does no harm.
- Sugar and vanillaTwo ounces of sugar by weight is a generous quarter-cup of granulated; use superfine or confectioners' sugar so it dissolves without regraining the cream. Ten drops of vanilla essence is on the order of an eighth of a teaspoon of modern extract.
- Beat only two minutes after sugaringThe cream is already stiff at this stage. Two minutes of brisk beating folds in the sugar and vanilla; much more and it breaks into butter and grains.
- Dentilated tubeAn old term for a toothed or star tip. Any medium open-star tip in a piping bag reproduces the intended finish.
- Assemble at the last minuteMeringue draws moisture from cream and goes soft within an hour. Fill, pair and decorate just before the plates leave the kitchen.
- YieldTwelve shells joined in pairs gives six finished meringues, one to a saucer, as the recipe indicates.
Sweetened, vanilla-scented whipped cream has been called crème Chantilly since the eighteenth century, and is traditionally linked to the kitchens of the Château de Chantilly north of Paris and often, on no firm evidence, to the maître d'hôtel Vatel. The meringue shell is older still and is generally traced to continental Europe in the late seventeenth century; the frequently repeated derivation from the Swiss town of Meiringen is traditional rather than documented. The pairing suits service work: two dry shells, a bowl of cream, a piping bag, and a dish that could be finished to order in a minute. Plated one to a saucer, it shows how much dessert service of this kind depended on components made in advance and assembled at the last moment.