The spirit of cookery

Cream Jellies, or Preparations of Cream with Jelly, are very characteristic dishes called Bavaroises, or Bavarian cheese. A milk or emulsion of almonds, or nuts, is mixed with boiling cream suitably sweetened ; to this a concentrated solution of gelatine is added (in the proportion of 1 oz. to the quart), the whole passed through a tammy, and put in moulds to set. Pistachios and spinach make the Bavaroise green. Such cream jellies may also be flavoured by liqueurs, maraschino, or essence of orange, lemon, orange-flower, vanilla, roast and bitter almonds, etc. Egg-yolks may also be added, or a liquid custard may be given as a sauce with the Bavaroise. Cream Jelly of Punch, as French cooks term it, is flavoured with Jamaica rum. Cream Jellies tvith Fruit are analogous to the preparations of whipped cream with fruit already defined. Juicy fruit has to be concentrated. Compound Custard Jellies contain eggs and a gelatinizing body, but no cream. Indeed, the custard is made to take the place of the cream, and from this and similar substitutions some German cooks call a mere custard a ‘ cream.’ The physical similarity to whipped cream is efi“ected by the addition of whipped white of egg. These preparations are DRESSED CREAMS— BAVAROISES put forth in books retailing cheap cookery and certain shops as creams, a name to which they are not entitled. We have therefore given them their proper defining name. A Custard Jelly loith Wine and Egg-froth bears the French appellation creme hachigue ; the wine may be hock, champagne, madeira, or malaga. The amount of gelatine in all these jellies is kept at 6|- per cent., dry, or about 1 oz. to the pint, of the finished jelly, for they have to maintain a spongy, frothy condition ; but the meat or sweet jellies require but ^ oz. to the pint. Custard Jelly loith Wine and Orange-juice is a good combination. Compoimd Custard Jellies with Cream and Custard Cream Jellies are mixtures of cream with custard and jelly, the latter added to give it consistence and shape, flavoured with materials similar to those which are employed in plain creams, custards, and jellies. When the cream is added to these compounds in the whipped state, they are by French cooks termed en mousse. This should be ‘ spongy.’ Such custard cream jellies may be flavoured with vanilla, or orange-flower, or madeira wine and vanilla, or maraschino, or coffee. An old recipe* prescribes curdling of the cream by the agency of rennet ferment obtained from fowl's stomachs or gizzards. This recipe has been so deteriorated by copyists that, on the false assumption of the gizzards being introduced to produce gelatine, the real gelatine was omitted, and the eggs were omitted probably from parsimony ; such a mutilated formula must necessarily produce a failure. Other flavours and additions are chocolate, burnt sugar, caramel (resembling crème brûlée), macaroons, and ratafia. A jelly flavoured with the latter also passes by the name of Italian cream, or Bavaroise with ratafia. * Cf. D.D., 4G9. Cold Charlottes or Pudding-like Preparations in which any of the Five Varieties of Cream may he employed.