Place half a pound of maccaroons or Naples biscuits at the bottom of a large glass bowl. Pour on them as much white wine as will cover and dissolve them. Make a rich custard, flavoured with bitter almonds or peach leaves; and pour it when cold on the maccaroons; the custard may be either baked or boiled. Then add a layer of marmalade or jam. Take a quart of cream, mix with it a quarter of a pound of sugar, and half a pint of white wine, and whip it with rods to a stiff froth; laying the froth (as you proceed) on an inverted sieve, with a dish under it to catch the cream that drips through; which must be saved and whipped over again. Instead of rods you may use a little tin churn. Pile the frothed cream upon the marmalade in a high pyramid. To ornament it,—take preserved water-melon rind that has been cut into leaves or flowers; split them nicely to make them thinner and lighter; place a circle or wreath of them round the heap of frothed cream, interspersing them with spots of stiff red currant jelly. Stick on the top of the pyramid a sprig of real flowers.
Take a quart of rich cream, and divide it in half. Sweeten one pint of it with loaf-sugar, and stir into it sufficient currant jelly to colour it of a fine pink. Put it into a glass bowl, and place in the centre a pile of sliced almond-sponge cake, or of lady cake; every slice spread thickly with raspberry jam or marmalade, and laid evenly one on another. Have ready the other pint of cream, flavoured with a few drops of oil of lemon, and beaten with rods to a stiff froth. Heap it all over the pile of cake, so as entirely to cover it.
Take a dozen of the square or oblong sponge-cakes that are commonly called Naples biscuits. They should be quite fresh. Spread over each a thick layer of raspberry jam, and place them in the bottom and round the sides of a glass bowl. Take the whites of six eggs, and mix with them six table-spoonfuls of raspberry or currant jelly. Beat the egg and jelly with rods till very light, and then fill up the bowl with it. For this purpose, cream (if you can conveniently procure it) is still better than white of egg.
You may make a charlotte with any sort of jam, marmalade, or fruit jelly. It can be prepared at a short notice, and is very generally liked.
Stone a quart of ripe plums, and stew them with a pound of brown sugar. Cut slices of bread and butter and lay them in the bottom and round the sides of a large bowl or deep dish. Pour in the plums boiling hot, cover the bowl, and set it away to cool gradually. When, quite cold, send it to table, and eat it with cream.