[Sca-cooks] Re: Strawberries and Snow

[Huette von Ahrens]

--- Philip & Susan Troy <troy at asan.com> wrote:

> See, this is wot I wuz on about. If you beat them
> together (even if
> the whites have been beaten previously, but the
> cream is not), the
> fat in the cream will act pretty much as the same as
> the fat in the
> egg yolks, and mess up the aeration of the whites,
> either by
> preventing further aeration or destroying the
> aeration that is
> already there.
>
> Maybe, for this to be a scientific possibility,
> Aoife is right and
> you have to beat them separately, at least the
> whites. The recipe is
> a little unclear; its terms are a bit like the
> assumptions you may
> and may not make arithmetically when an equation
> starts to have
> things in parentheses. Do we follow the instructions
> in sequence to
> the ingredients as listed in sequence, or do we
> apply _some_
> instructions to specific ingredients _before_ adding
> them, and apply
> the other instructions to the combined mass?
>
> Aoife seemed to feel that the whites were previously
> beaten, then
> mixed with, probably, a significantly heavier cream
> than we're used
> to seeing, then the whole thing mixed with the
> flavoring ingredients.
>  From the recipe, it seems like it could go either
> way.
>
> But this is why I was hoping people would try
> following it exactly
> and be willing to discuss what happened in detail.
>
> Adamantius

I am a little behind and somewhat fuzzy due to pain
medications and root canals etc.  I had planned on
writing about my experiments 20 years ago, but after
reading my message, I see that I didn't.  Sigh.

I tried exactly as written, first with a spoon and
then with the split stick, with abysmal results.  I
then switched to an egg whisk, then to a hand egg
beater, then to a mixer at full speed.  Nothing would
create a froth, so I turned the mess into a sort of
Creme Brulee and started over.  The second time I beat
the egg whites separately with a spoon until I
achieved an amount of froth.  I then collandered it
and continued to beat the egg whites and collandered
them until all was completely frothy.  I did the same
with the cream.  When all were done, I folded them all
together with the split stick, which worked very well.

However, for the sake of time for the banquet, I beat
the eggs and cream separately with a hand mixer and
folded them together with an egg whisk.  This created
the same look and saved a lot of time.

Also, as I didn't like the look of the strawberries
after being cooked, although they tasted great, I then
folded the strawberry mixture into the snow to create
a kind of strawberry mousse. I then spooned the
strawberry mousse into the prebaked tart crusts and
decorated each with sprig of rosemary stuck into a
fresh strawberry.

Of course, this wasn't as the author wrote, but it was
very, very popular!

Huette








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