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Pineapple Bohemian Cream
To flavor with pineapple, cut one apple fine, boil with half a pound of powdered sugar; strain through a colander, add the dissolved gelatine, set on ice and when it thickens, stir until smooth; add the whipped cream and mould.
This is a flavour variation rather than a standalone recipe — it assumes you already have the book's base Bohemian cream (gelatine, sugar, whipped cream) in front of you. A few things need translating before it will work.
- "One apple" means one pineappleThe heading governs the ingredient: cut one pineapple fine. The word is most likely an ellipsis of "pine-apple" or a printer's slip, since an actual apple would give you a cream with no pineapple in it at all.
- The missing quantitiesNo gelatine or cream amount is given because the base recipe supplies them. For roughly a pound of prepared fruit purée and half a pound of sugar, figure on about 1 pint of heavy cream whipped soft and 1 oz (about 4 envelopes) of gelatine bloomed in cold water — but check the parent recipe first rather than guessing.
- Half a pound of powdered sugarAbout 1 cup. Period "powdered" sugar is finely ground granulated, not the cornstarch-cut confectioners' sugar sold today; plain granulated is the closer match here, since it is being boiled anyway.
- Fresh pineapple will destroy the setThis is the hinge. Raw pineapple contains bromelain, which digests gelatine and leaves you with sweet soup. Boiling the fruit with the sugar, as instructed, denatures the enzyme — do not shortcut by folding in raw or lightly warmed fruit, and do not add extra fresh juice at the end.
- Strain through a colanderA colander leaves noticeable fibre. For a smooth cream, press the cooked pulp through a fine sieve instead; pineapple's woody threads are unpleasant suspended in a set cream.
- "Set on ice and when it thickens"Chill the sweetened purée until it has the body of raw egg white — thickened at the edges but still pourable. Fold in the whipped cream then. Too warm and the cream deflates; too cold and you get streaks and lumps you cannot stir out.
- Moulding and unmouldingRinse the mould in cold water before filling, and chill at least four hours, preferably overnight. Dip the mould briefly in warm water to turn out.
- YieldA quart mould would serve roughly six to eight. It is rich.
Bohemian cream is one of the several names that circulated in English-language cookbooks for what the French called bavarois — a flavoured custard or fruit base set with gelatine and lightened with whipped cream. American books of the period carried Bavarian, Bohemian and Russian creams with overlapping meanings, the distinctions varying from author to author rather than following any fixed rule. Commercial powdered gelatine had by this time made the setting agent straightforward: cooks who would once have boiled down calves' feet could buy a reliable product by the box. The result is a dessert that looks luxurious and demands patience but very little skill.