ISSUE 64, CREAMS, Part 2: Chantilly
Chantilly Cream
Many fresh fruits have an acid component in their flavor, from small berries to stone fruits. Only recently have plant breeders attempted to eliminate the sour dimension of peaches in creations such as the White Lady Peach—a sweet without acid variety. Pastry chefs did not much worry about the degree of acid a fruit possessed because they could counteract it in a preparation. One favorite item intermixed with fresh fruit was Chantilly Cream, a mixture of whipped cream, vanilla, confectioner’s sugar, and sour cream. While the sour cream was optional, it appeared in many 19th-century recipes in the belief that contrasts between flavors (sour and sweet) should not be too stark. Here is a rather standard formulation used in the United States at the dawn of the twentieth century:
There were two requisites when served: Chantilly Cream had to be cold and it had to have a semi-stiff body.
In the American South, hoteliers began applying Chantilly cream as a topping to open faced pies when serving them as formal desserts in the 1920s. Pumpkin, Sweet Potato, and Pecan were frequently crowned with a dollop of Chantilly Cream to gussy up the presentation. The administration of a cold scoop onto a hot bread pudding was a post WW2 fashion. It fortunately passed out of favor.
The cream itself began to undergo some alteration by confectioners, with coffee, almond extract, maple syrup, and fruit syrups being intermingled with the cream. Because certain fruits don’t blend well with vanilla (plum, kiwi) some tact is needed in these emendations. If Chantilly Cream is being used as a moistening layer between layers of a cake, it is best to keep the Cream simple—vanilla, coffee, or almond—all classic flavors.