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Pineapple Charlotte Russe
Half a box of gelatine dissolved in a cup of milk, one pint of cream, whites of four eggs, half a can of grated pine apple. Beat whites of the eggs very light, also the cream, add one and a half cups of sugar to the whipped cream, then pineapple; strain in the gelatine, then add beaten whites, stirring them in lightly. Line your mold with sponge cake, pour in mixture and set away to cool.
This is a cold-set charlotte: nothing in it is ever heated to a safe temperature, and the quantities that matter most are given in vanished units.
- Raw egg whitesFour whites are beaten and folded into a mixture that is only chilled, never cooked. Raw whites carry a Salmonella risk, and this dessert sits for hours at refrigerator temperature and is then served to a table that historically included children and the elderly. There is no step in the method that brings the eggs anywhere near 160F.
- The gelatine is not a safeguardDissolving gelatine in a cup of milk requires warming, but only to the point where the granules melt — far below pasteurisation, and the milk is then cooled before the whites go in. Setting a mixture does not make it safe; it simply holds the bacteria in place.
- Nothing is heated at allCream, sugar, canned pineapple and beaten whites are combined cold. Modern charlotte and mousse recipes get around this with a cooked sugar syrup poured into the whites, a stovetop custard base, or pasteurised whites. None of those appear here.
- Fresh pineapple would defeat the setThe recipe calls for canned pineapple, which is what allows the mold to firm: bromelain in fresh pineapple digests gelatine, and canning heat destroys the enzyme. Whether the choice was made for that reason cannot be told from the text.
- "Half a box of gelatine"Boxed gelatine of the period might run an ounce or two to the box, sold as sheets or as a coarse granulated powder, so half a box is perhaps half an ounce or somewhat more -- box sizes were not standardised and the figure is genuinely ambiguous.
- Sweetness by modern standardsA cup and a half of sugar into a pint of cream, on top of syrup-packed canned pineapple, is very sweet by present-day expectations.
- If you want to make oneUse a current pineapple charlotte or bavarian recipe with a cooked base or pasteurised egg white. The proportions here are not worth the risk they carry.
Charlotte russe is generally traced to the early nineteenth-century kitchens of Antonin Carême, who is credited with lining a mold with ladyfingers or sponge and filling it with cold bavarian cream -- a cold cousin of the older baked apple charlotte. By the time this book was compiled, the dish had become thoroughly American and thoroughly domestic: gelatine came in boxes from the grocer rather than being boiled down from calves' feet, and canned fruit made a pineapple version possible out of season. Canned grated pineapple turns up in charlottes, salads and cakes throughout books of this vintage.