Boil over a slow fire a pint and a half of cream. While it is
boiling have ready six yolks of eggs, beaten up with two table-spoonfuls
of powdered arrow-root, or fine flour. Stir this
gradually into the boiling cream, taking care to have it perfectly
smooth and free from lumps. Ten minutes will suffice for the egg
and cream to boil together. Then divide the mixture by putting it
into two separate sauce-pans.
Then mix with it, in one of the pans, six ounces of chocolate
scraped fine, two ounces of powdered loaf-sugar, and a quarter of
a pound of maccaroons, broken up. When it has come to a hard boil,
take it off, stir it well, pour it into a bowl, and set it away to
cool.
Have ready, for the other sauce-pan of cream and egg, a dozen
bitter almonds, and four ounces of shelled sweet almonds or
pistachio nuts, all blanched and pounded in a mortar with rose-water
to a smooth paste, and mixed with an ounce of citron also
pounded. Add four ounces of powdered sugar; and to colour it
green, two large spoonfuls of spinach juice that has been strained
through a sieve. Stir this mixture into the other half of the
cream, and let it come to a boil. Then put it aside to cool.
Cut a large sponge-cake into slices half an inch thick. Spread one
slice thickly with the chocolate cream, and cover another slice
with the almond cream. Do this alternately (piling them evenly on
a china dish) till all the ingredients are used up. You may
arrange it in the original form of the sponge-cake before it was
cut, or in a pyramid. Have ready the whites of the six eggs
whipped to a stiff froth, with which have been gradually mixed six
ounces of powdered sugar, and twelve drops of oil of lemon. With a
spoon heap this meringue (as the French call it) all over the pile
of cake, &c., and then sift powdered sugar over it. Set it in a
very slow oven till the outside becomes a light brown colour.
Serve it up cold, ornamented according to your taste.
If you find the chocolate cream too thin, add more maccaroons. If
the almond cream is too thin, mix in more pounded citron. If
either of the mixtures is too thick, dilute it with more cream.
This is superior to a Charlotte Russe.