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Strawberry Bohemian Cream
Proceed as above with the exception of the flavor.
Strain two pounds of strawberries through a colander, sweeten to taste, add to the dissolved gelatine, set in ice and when it thickens, stir until smooth; add the whipped cream and mould.
Creams flavored with peaches, raspberries and other fruits may be made by following the above ideas, but in no case add the whipped cream until the mixture is cool and begins to thicken.
This is a variation entry: it assumes you have the preceding Bohemian cream recipe in front of you, which supplies the gelatine, sugar and cream quantities. What follows covers the parts that translate badly and the one step the original itself flags in its final clause.
- The hingeNever add the whipped cream while the gelatine mixture is still warm or fully liquid. Warm liquid collapses the air out of the cream and the dessert sets in layers, with a rubbery band of jelly at the bottom. Wait until the fruit-gelatine base has the body of unbeaten egg white, then fold.
- Missing quantitiesBecause the base recipe is not repeated here, the gelatine and cream amounts are genuinely absent from this page. A workable ratio for this style is about 1 tablespoon of powdered gelatine (roughly one and a half standard envelopes, an envelope being about 2 1/4 teaspoons) per 2 cups of total liquid plus fruit puree, with 1 to 1 1/2 cups of cream whipped to soft peaks.
- "Dissolved gelatine"Period books mean sheet gelatine or a boxed granulated product softened in cold water and then melted in hot liquid. Modern powdered gelatine behaves the same way: bloom it in a few tablespoons of cold water for five minutes, then dissolve over gentle heat, avoiding a prolonged boil, which can weaken the set.
- Two pounds of strawberriesRoughly a quart and a third by dry measure, yielding about 3 cups of pulp once pushed through a colander. A food mill or a coarse sieve does the same job faster; a blender is a poor substitute here because it aerates the puree and pulverises the seeds.
- "Set in ice"A bowl nested in ice water, stirred often. This takes 10 to 20 minutes and needs watching, since the mixture goes from liquid to stiff quickly at the edges. The recipe itself directs stirring until smooth once it thickens; if it sets too far, warming the bowl briefly before stirring will help.
- Fruits to avoid in the substitutionsThe invitation to use "other fruits" takes no account of proteolytic enzymes. Fresh pineapple, kiwi, papaya and fig contain enzymes that cut gelatine and prevent setting; use them cooked or canned, or not at all. Very acidic purees also set softer, so hold back on added lemon.
- Moulding and unmouldingRinse the mould with cold water rather than oiling it, chill at least 4 hours and preferably overnight. Dip the mould in warm water for a few seconds and invert onto a chilled plate.
- YieldA quart to a quart and a half of finished cream, serving six to eight.
Bohemian cream is one of a family of nineteenth-century gelatine desserts — with Bavarian cream, charlotte russe and the various "jellied" creams — that became household cooking only once commercial gelatine was cheap and reliable. Before that, cooks made their own by boiling calves' feet or isinglass for hours, which is why earlier books treat moulded creams as company food. The name is generally taken as a fanciful geographic label of the sort confectioners applied freely at the time, in the same spirit as Bavarian, Spanish and Russian creams, rather than as evidence of any Bohemian origin. Its appearance here as a run of interchangeable fruit variations — strawberry, peach, raspberry, "other fruits" — is characteristic of turn-of-the-century American cookbooks, which taught a single method and then let the reader ring the changes with whatever was in season.