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Strawberry Bavarian Cream
This can be made also of peaches or pineapple, or any fruit in due proportions. Pick and press through a sieve sufficient berries to make a pint of pulp, add 10 ounces of sugar, 1/2 a teaspoonful of vanilla, and 1 1/2 ounces of gelatine, melted in 1 cup of water. Stir until almost firm, add sufficient whipped cream to fill a 3-pint mould. Set on ice.
A classic bavarois built on fruit purée, gelatine and whipped cream, with no custard base. The proportions need adjusting for modern gelatine, which is considerably stronger than what the book assumed.
- The hinge: fold the cream at the right moment"Stir until almost firm" means the fruit jelly should be at the consistency of raw egg white — thickened, sluggish, but still pourable. Set it over a bowl of ice water and stir; if it goes past that point the gelatine seizes into threads and the cream will never fold in smoothly.
- Gelatine, reduced1 1/2 ounces is roughly 42 g, about six modern envelopes, and would give a rubbery, sliceable block. For a spoonable Bavarian in a 6-cup mould, 3 to 4 teaspoons (about 9-12 g) of powdered gelatine is enough. Soften it in the cold cup of water first, then warm gently until clear — do not boil it.
- Sugar10 ounces is about 1 1/3 cups granulated, which suits sharp, underripe fruit. With good ripe strawberries, 5 to 6 ounces (about 3/4 cup) is closer to modern taste. Dissolve it into the pulp before the gelatine goes in.
- A pint of pulpTwo cups of sieved purée takes roughly 2 lb of hulled strawberries. Sieving rather than blending is worth keeping — it removes the seeds and gives a smooth body.
- Whipped cream quantity"Sufficient to fill a 3-pint mould" works out at about 1 to 1 1/4 cups of heavy cream, whipped to soft peaks (roughly 2 to 2 1/2 cups whipped). Whip it no further than that; stiff cream folds in as lumps and loses the airiness.
- "Set on ice"Stand the mould in ice, or simply chill until firm. Four hours in the refrigerator, or overnight, sets it through.
- Unmoulding and yieldDip the mould in warm water for a few seconds, run a thin knife round the rim, and invert onto a chilled plate. A 3-pint mould serves eight to ten.
- The other fruitsPeaches and pineapple are both suggested, but fresh pineapple contains bromelain, which digests gelatine and will keep the cream from setting. Cook the purée briefly first, or use canned pineapple.
The bavarois is French restaurant cookery rather than Bavarian home cooking — the name is generally traced to a dish made for or associated with the Wittelsbach court, though the version cooks recognise today, a fruit or custard base lightened with whipped cream and held with gelatine, belongs to the nineteenth-century Parisian kitchen and its codifiers. It became a fixture in English and American books once commercially sheeted and granulated gelatine made the setting agent cheap and reliable; before that, a cook would have drawn her own jelly from calves' feet or isinglass, which was slow work and made moulded creams a dish for households with staff. A recipe like this one, which assumes both a mould and a supply of ice, sits squarely in the late Victorian and Edwardian dessert repertoire, where the ability to turn something soft out of a shape and have it stand up was itself the point.