Read more . [3] It was named in the early nineteenth century for Bavaria or, perhaps more likely in the history of haute cuisine, for a particularly distinguished visiting Bavarian, such as a Wittelsbach. Escoffier declared that Bavarois would be more properly Moscovite, owing to its preparation, in the days before mechanical refrigeration, by being made in a hermetically-sealed mould that was plunged into salted crushed ice to set— hence Muscovite . At the twenty-first century dinner table, one can scarcely imagine the impression made in the mid-nineteenth century by an unmoulded Bavarian cream presented at a summertime dinner party.