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Italian Cream
Make a boiled custard of six eggs to a quart of milk, flavor with very little vanilla, add half an ounce of gelatine to a quart of custard. When quite thick stir in as much syllabub as you like. This syllabub is made with one quart of cream, half gill of wine, the juice of one lemon, the beaten whites of three eggs and sugar to taste frothed together. Serve in little glass bowls or cups set in pink paper rose cases.
Two preparations meet here: a gelatine-set boiled custard and a frothed syllabub folded into it. The result is closer to a Bavarian cream than to anything now sold as Italian cream, and it stands or falls on the temperature at which the two are combined.
- The hinge: fold at the right momentThe custard must be cool and just beginning to set "quite thick" before the syllabub goes in. Fold into a warm custard and the froth collapses; wait until the gelatine has fully gelled and it will break into lumps rather than combine.
- Gelatine quantitiesHalf an ounce of granulated gelatine per quart of custard is about four and a half level teaspoons, or two standard quarter-ounce envelopes. Soften it in a few tablespoons of cold water or milk first, then stir into the hot custard so it dissolves completely.
- Half a gill of wineA US gill is 4 fl oz, so half a gill is 2 fl oz. 'Wine' in a syllabub of this date often meant sherry, madeira or a sweet white, though the book does not specify.
- Boiled custard means scalded, not boiledSix eggs to a quart of milk cooks to a nappe consistency at 170-175F over low heat or in a double boiler. Above about 180F it scrambles, and no amount of straining recovers the texture.
- Curdling from the lemonAcid and alcohol will thicken cream but can also break it. Whip the cream to soft peaks first, then add the wine and lemon juice slowly while beating, before folding in the whites.
- Raw egg whitesThe three whites in the syllabub are never cooked. Use pasteurized whites if serving anyone elderly, pregnant, very young or immune-compromised.
- YieldThe recipe leaves the amount of syllabub to the cook, so the total varies; using the full quart of cream with a quart of custard makes a great deal of dessert, on the order of twelve to sixteen small glass servings. Halving the whole thing is sensible for a modern table.
- Setting and serviceChill at least four hours in the individual cups; the aerated mixture sets softer than a plain jelly and will not unmould cleanly. The "pink paper rose cases" are purely decorative frilled paper collars, of the sort now sold as cupcake cases.
"Italian cream" in Anglo-American cookbooks of the nineteenth century usually means a cream set with gelatine or isinglass rather than anything from Italy; the name attached itself to the fashion for moulded, chilled creams that spread from professional confectionery into domestic kitchens as packaged sheet and granulated gelatine became widely available. The syllabub folded into it is much older, an English drink of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries in which wine or cider was mixed with cream until it frothed and separated into a liquor below and a whip above; by 1900 it survived mainly as this stiff, spoonable "whipt syllabub." The recipe is less about flavor, which is a whisper of vanilla and lemon, than about presentation in little glass bowls dressed in paper rose cases, a dessert for a lady's luncheon or an evening reception rather than family dinner.