Home › The World's Kitchen › Whipped Cream, a La Vanille
Whipped Cream, a La Vanille
Pour two gills thick, fresh cream into a well-cleaned basin. Place the basin on another larger one with some broken ice and a little cold water at the bottom. Then with a soft wire egg whip beat up the cream rather slowly at the star, and increase in briskness until it is a firm froth. Sweeten with one and a half ounces fine sugar and add one good teaspoon vanilla essence, beating constantly for two minutes, and it will be ready for use. Suppress all the superfluous milk which may adhere to the cream at the bottom of the basin before using it.
A straightforward whipped cream, with the period's careful attention to keeping everything cold. The measurements convert cleanly.
- Two gillsA gill is half a cup, so this is one cup (about 240 ml) of cream. It will roughly double in volume, yielding about two cups whipped /,
- "Thick, fresh cream"Use heavy or whipping cream at 36 percent butterfat or higher. Anything labelled light cream or single cream will not hold a firm froth no matter how long you beat it.
- SugarOne and a half ounces of fine sugar is about 3 tablespoons of caster or superfine sugar; a reasonable ratio for a cup of cream, if anything a touch sweeter than most modern recipes.
- The ice bathThis is the hinge of the recipe. Cream whips because cold fat globules cluster around air bubbles; warm cream simply froths and collapses. Chill the bowl and the whisk as well as the cream, and the ice-water bath is worth setting up even with a stand mixer on a warm day.
- Slow at the startBeginning slowly and increasing pace builds a finer, more stable foam than going hard from the outset. The same logic applies to an electric mixer: start on low, finish on medium-high.
- Two minutes more after sweeteningWatch rather than time it. Cream goes from firm peaks to grainy butter quickly, and the sugar and vanilla add liquid that can tip it over. Stop when the whisk leaves a clean trail.
- "Suppress all the superfluous milk"Cream that has weeped watery liquid at the bottom of the basin should be poured or spooned off before serving, or it will slacken the whole. Tip the bowl and drain it.
- Vanilla essenceA good teaspoon of vanilla extract. Period "essence" was frequently an alcoholic extract much like today's.
Whipped cream long predates any mechanical whisk: sixteenth- and seventeenth-century European cooks beat cream with bundles of twigs or rushes and skimmed off the foam that rose, and old English names for it include "snow" while the French called it neige — for its appearance. The name crème Chantilly, attached to sweetened whipped cream, is traditionally linked to the kitchens of the Château de Chantilly and often to the maître d'hôtel Vatel, though that connection is legend rather than documented record. What dates this version is the equipment and the ice: a "soft wire egg whip" and a basin set over broken ice were the marks of a well-run kitchen with a dependable supply of ice, and the instruction to build speed gradually reflects hand-beating, where a cook could feel the cream thicken under the whisk.