Cover the bottom of a handsome china dish or a glass bowl, with sliced almond sponge-cake cut to fit. Then place round the sides slices of the cake all of the same shape and size, making them wrap a little over each other. Pour in the mixture. Cover the top with a layer of cake cut very thin. Have ready an icing made in the usual manner of beaten white of egg and powdered loaf-sugar; and flavoured with rose or lemon. Spread it thickly and evenly over the surface of the top, smoothing it with a broad knife dipped in cold water. Then set it on ice till wanted. This Charlotte Russe is not to be turned out of the dish. It may be made in two dishes.
Instead of vanilla, you may flavour the custard with a handful of peach-leaves, or of broken up bitter almonds, boiled in the first half-pint of milk, and two large sticks of cinnamon broken in pieces.
When the icing on the top has about half-dried, you may ornament it by sticking on ripe strawberries of equal size in circles, stars, or any fanciful figures. Or it may be decorated with white grapes, each grape standing on end, if oval or long shaped.
ANOTHER CHARLOTTE RUSSE.--Take a large circular or oval lady cake, and with a sharp knife cut out nicely the inside, leaving the sides and bottom standing, (about half an inch thick,) in the form of a mould. Make a rich boiled custard, allowing eight eggs to a quart of unskimmed milk, half a pint of which has been previously flavoured by boiling in it half a dozen blades of mace with a vanilla bean, or a handful of shelled bitter almonds or peach-kernels blanched and broken up. Strain this flavoured milk and add it to the other. Then beat the eggs very light and stir them gradually into the milk. Set it over hot coals, stirring it all the time, but take it off before it comes to a boil, or it will curdle. Have ready an ounce of isinglass boiled to a jelly in a little water. When the custard and the isinglass are both cold (not hard) mix them well together and add sufficient powdered loaf-sugar to make it very sweet. Take a quart of rich cream that has been seasoned with extract of roses, and whip it to a stiff froth. Take off the froth as it stiffens, and add it gradually to the custard, stirring it very hard after it is all in to prevent its separating. Fill with the mixture the scooped-out sponge cake. Then cover the whole with an icing made in the usual way of white of egg and sugar, flavoured with rose or lemon. Then set it on ice till wanted.
