SUMMER FOOLS

It is time to talk about fools again. Before summer leaves and the Indian one takes over.

The English love fools, but fruity ones, not the summer ones in baggy shorts, spandex, sagging tank tops and footwear more Conan than visually chic. They also have a perfect way of dealing with foolishness: they turn it all into froth.

Therefore, I will ignore all the badly dressed tourists and I will plunge directly into the berry patch, though I am too old to bend over far enough to pick strawberries. A farmer’s market stand will have to do, especially one with gooseberries.

When I revised the 1950 edition of Henri-Paul Pellaprat’s Great Book of French Cuisine - all 2000 recipes of it - somewhere along towards number 1845 is a call for gooseberries “fresh or frozen.” Gooseberries are rare enough, but frozen ones should be rarer, even to the point of extinction. I know that Elizabeth David, always passionate about fools, would have shuddered at the mention of frozen fruit. Or at least would have had me reach for another chilled Chablis while we talked about it. Now I reach for her little booklets on the subject of fools as I do every year at this time, preferably simultaneously with a big bite on a little ripe Brin d’Amour from Sardinia, and several deep drafts of a Coche-Dury Burgundy, or someone else’s Bastard.

The booklets were printed for Elizabeth by Hopkins & Bailey Ltd. in 1969, just as I was starting my first correspondence with her. My notebooks at the time were already full of the carryings on of Robert May and Sir Kenelm Digby - both great fans of fruit fools and definitely not of the other kind. So, I just had to write to her. Some of my talk was of fools. Some of trifles. Others about huffs. She answered saying I was no fool but had a lot to learn. In that spirit, it is time again to get out that fool whip and dust it off. 

Every year I start with gooseberries and end up with quince. In between there are all the other berries, white peaches (with a dashing of Maraschino, that godlike liqueur if it is made by Luxardo), plums, and even Musk or a Charentais melon. But the most mysterious and gripping-haunting, is the fool-making gooseberry.

Caveat as you carpe diem: the cream must be thick, real, and, if possible, raw. Those huffs, let alone silly bubs, used to come straight from the cow’s udder into a crock of wine or sack just waiting to turn the heavily creamed Jersey and Guernsey milk into a fool. And the sherry, sack or Rhenish wine must be good enough to make it a test to make it past one’s glass and into the bowl: none of that “cooking sherry” nonsense.

This is the fool - soft, creamy, untroubled.

Gooseberry Fool

Photo Courtesy of Great British Chefs

In the Cuisiner Anglais Universel ou Le Nec Plus Ultra de la Gourmandise, it days that the Eternel Syllabub, or the syllabub solide which is the same as syllabub sous la vache (under the cow) is perfection beyond a mere fool. 

“Take a quart of cream and a pint of Rhenish wine and mix with the juice of 4 lemons with the amount of sugar that is sweet enough for your taste and then tweak it enough (to your taste) by adding lemon zest. Then beat it [in the 1700s with “a small rod” but they meant, really, a whisk of reeds tied together] until it is entirely fluffed. Then pour it into syllabub glasses and let it set.”

Or take 2 pounds of green ripe gooseberries - they will be plump and have a slightly purple tinge – and a half-pound of sugar. Put both into a pan in a bain-marie and cook until quite soft. Put through a food mill and then a sieve to extract (and reserve separately for syllabubs) the liquid from the body of the fruit. Chill the puree and then add at least a cup of the thickest, best, most wonderful, unadulterated cream you can lay hands on. Let sit until it thickens and cures – about a day somewhere chilled but not as cold as that refrigerator. Spoon into crystal coupes and serve chilled with oven-warm shortbread of the richest variety.

To avoid heavy-handed pedantry, I will avoid further mention of bubs and bubbas, silly or not, let alone trifles, punches, stuffs, or huffs and settle for a recipe not for Naples biscuits (macaroons studded with pine nuts) which, in the 19^th century were served with the above fluffs, but for E. David’s good and simple shortbread for four people. 

Elizabeth David’s Shortbread

Get together 3 ounces each of flour and unsalted butter and half that quantity of fine sugar, and 1 ounce of ground almonds and half that amount of rice flour. “Crumble” the butter and two flours together, and then add the almonds and the sugar. Do not work the mixture too much - it should be grainy and rough. Spread the mixture into a six-inch pan with a removable base, pressing it down lightly to smooth it out. Prick the surface with a fork. Bake in the center of a preheated 310-degree oven for 1 ¼ hours, until the shortbread is a very pale biscuit color. Leave to cool in the tin, but before it is completely cold cut into small, neat wedges.