Engraving of small jars of coffee cream in Jules Gouffé’s book, Le Livre de pâtisserie, 1873
Chocolate creams appear twenty-one times in the Choisy menus from 1744 to 1746, making them the most common sweet dessert on those menus. The recipes were also included in the cookbooks of the time.
I had read, though I couldn’t find the source, that the creams were cooked and served in small pots.
The first clue I found was Jean-Michel Garric’s academic text on cream and juice pots. This confirmed to me that these small pots existed, were used in meals at Choisy in the 18th century (white cream in small pots among the intermediate desserts), and what they looked like in the 19th century.
Then, while searching an auction site, I came across an illustration of small pots for coffee and chocolate cream in a book by Jules Gouffé (featured image at the top of the page). Even though this book dated from 1873, and was therefore more recent than the period I’m interested in, it proved that these small pots were later used to hold coffee and chocolate creams.
Menu from Choisy, from the dinner on July 31, 1746, BNF, Manuscripts Department. Two small cream pots: on the right, from the Manufacture de Chantilly, on display at the Condé Museum. On the left, from the Manufacture de Sèvres, featuring a pearl and barbel motif, on display at the Palace of Versailles.
But I still had my doubts. I’d confirmed that the pots existed, that they were used in the 18th century, and for coffee and chocolate cream recipes in the 19th century. However, I wanted to find several small jars from those periods in official collections and databases.
During my visit to the Manufacture de Sèvres, I asked my friends at Sèvres if they’d heard of them. They had! They advised me to check the national databases. I discovered the Joconde database and the one at the Adrien Dubouché Museum. Jackpot. I found several entries for 18th-century cream pots with their corresponding photos.
All that remained was to figure out how to buy some at a reasonable price. And I thought back to my Chinese friend who had told me that they looked like “cups with lids” that they have in China.
What if that’s actually what beginners call them? It was thanks to that question that I found my six jars, which look just like cream pots and have the same dimensions.
My chocolate cream now has its recipe, and today, it also has its very own little jar.
Sources
- Garric, Jean-Michel. “Pot à jus, pot à crème. Petite enquête gastronomique sur un objet mal compris.” December 12, 2019.
- Gouffé, Jules. Le livre de pâtisserie / par Jules Gouffé, …; ouvrage contenant 10 planches chromolithographiques et 137 gravures sur bois d’après les peintures à l’huile et les dessins de E. Ronjat. Paris: Hachette, 1873.
