DREAMLAND
“Added to the basic cooking lessons were the classes in fine cuisine. They meant a gateway into a bigger, more exciting world: the chic, French banquet-style dishes a sharp contrast to the grim reality of the post-war city. The girls were presented with their textbook, their bible: the ‘Neerlands Kookboek der Rotterdamse Huishoudschool’, edition 1946. It is a manifesto of hope for a better future. The authors in the preface gladly admit that, sure, we don’t know how on earth you’re supposed to get cream or butter, but we are gonna use them in each recipe. These girls were trained to be cooks for a time of abundance in a time of shortage. And, sure enough, those days of plenty would follow, some ten, fifteen years later.”
Read More: An education: 1946, a school for Housewives
Under the circumstances of 1946, the fine cuisine young girls at the huishoudschool were taught must have seemed like a fantasy, a reverie, a dreamland. One of the recipes from the curriculum my grandmother particularly likes, as do I, is for ‘orange bavarois’: an aerated, fluffy pudding flavoured with orange.
Orange bavarois
150 milliliters water
Peel of one orange
20 grams leaf gelatin
120 grams sugar
Juice of six small oranges, about 400 milliliters
Juice of one lemon
1 egg white
200 milliliters of cream
Bring the water to a boil with the orange peel and let simmer for about ten minutes. Meanwhile, soak the leaf gelatin in cold water until it’s soft and squishy. Remove the peel from the water, take the pan off the heat and stir the gelatin and sugar into the liquid to dissolve. Mix in the orange and lemon juice and put to the side to cool slightly. In separate bowls, whip the cream and egg white until stiff. When the orange mixture starts to gel and is no longer hot to the touch, fold in the cream and egg white, making sure to lose as little air as possible. Pour the mixture into one or more very lightly oiled pudding forms and let set in the fridge for at least two hours. To release, dip the form in warm water for a few seconds at a time, until the outer layer of gelatin is melted just enough to get the pudding out of the form — without melting it like an iceberg.
Notes:
This is an easy recipe to experiment with — for example by using different citrus fruits, as we have done here with grapefruit. If you were to use all lemon, however, it would probably be good to raise the amount of sugar. (The original recipe for lemon bavarois in the book uses lemon in combination with white wine; if you would be interested in this recipe, please send us an e-mail.) It can also easily be made vegetarian by substituting the gelatin with agar agar. In this case, use 2,5 tablespoons of agar agar powder. The texture of the pudding will be slightly different, and there are a few technical differences one needs to know about. Agar agar does not set unless it has been brought to a boil. To be safe, add the powder to the citrus-infused water and boil for about two minutes, before adding in the sugar. Agar agar sets at a temperature of about 35 degrees Celsius — much higher than for gelatin —, making it a little harder to work with. To avoid stress, whip the cream and egg whites before starting on the jelly mixture and work quickly.
Original recipe: H.H.F. Henderson, H.M. Callenbach and H. Toors
Text: Yannic Moeken
Photography: Junshen Wu
Food Styling: Yannic Moeken
Production: Sandra von Mayer-Myrtenhain
