FRUIT CREAMS, AND ITALIAN CREAMS

These are very quickly and easily made, by mixing with good cream a sufficient proportion of the sweetened juice of fresh fruit, or of well-made fruit jelly or jam, to flavour it: a few drops of prepared cochineal may be added to deepen the colour when it is required for any particular purpose. A quarter of a pint of strawberry or of raspberry jelly will fully flavour a pint of cream: a very little lemon-juice improves almost all compositions of this kind. When jam is used it must first be gradually mixed with the cream, and then worked through a sieve, to take out the seed or skin of the fruit. All fresh juice, for this purpose, must of course, be cold; that of strawberries is best obtained by crushing the fruit and strewing sugar over it. Peaches, pine-apple, apricots, or nectarines, may be simmered for a few minutes in a little syrup, and this, drained well from them, will serve extremely well to mix with the cream when it has become thoroughly cold: the lemon-juice should be added to all of these. When the ingredients are well blended, lightly whisk or mill them to a froth; take this off with a skimmer as it rises, and lay it upon a fine sieve reversed, to drain, or if it is to be served in glasses, fill them with it at once.

Italian creams are either fruit-flavoured only, or mixed with wine like syllabubs, then whisked to a stiff froth and put into a perforated mould, into which a muslin is first laid; or into a small hair-sieve (which must also first be lined with the muslin), and left to drain until the following day, when the cream must be very gently turned out, and dished, and garnished, as fancy may direct.