Fruit Trappe
Line a mould with vanilla ice cream, filling the centre with strawberries, raspberries, currants or sliced fruit of any kind.- Cover the whole with the cream, and set it in a freezer for an hour. The fruit should not be frozen.
This is a bombe in all but name: an ice cream shell moulded around a centre of fresh fruit. The instructions assume an ice-and-salt freezing tub and a cook who understands that the shell must be built while the ice cream is soft enough to spread but firm enough to hold a wall.
- "Set it in a freezer"In this period the freezer is the packing tub - the mould buried in a mix of crushed ice and coarse salt, roughly three parts ice to one of salt by volume. A modern deep freeze will serve, though an hour only firms the shell; a fully hardened bombe is better left two to three hours.
- Softening the ice creamCommercial ice cream straight from the freezer will crack rather than line a mould. Let a quart stand at room temperature ten to fifteen minutes until it spreads like thick frosting, then press it up the sides with the back of a chilled spoon.
- The mouldA metal bombe mould, a charlotte tin or a 1 to 1.5 quart metal bowl all work; metal chills and releases far better than glass or ceramic. Chill the empty mould in the freezer first so the first layer of cream sets on contact instead of sliding down.
- "The fruit should not be frozen"This is the hinge of the dish. The centre is meant to stay soft and juicy against the frozen shell, so use fruit at cool room temperature, add it at the last moment before sealing, and serve within a few hours - held overnight the berries will freeze solid and go grainy.
- CurrantsRed or white currants, not dried Zante currants. If you cannot find fresh ones, pitted cherries or sliced peaches sit better in this mould than anything acidic and watery.
- Sealing and unmouldingCover the surface with a round of parchment and press the lid or foil tight; air is what puts a crust of ice crystals on the exposed cream. To turn out, dip the mould in warm water for five seconds, invert onto a chilled plate, and lift it away.
- YieldA 1.5 quart mould gives six to eight servings. Cut it in wedges with a knife dipped in hot water so the fruit centre shows on each slice.
"Trappe" here is very likely the printer's or the household's version of frappé, French for iced or chilled, a word that turned up in American cookbooks of the late nineteenth century attached to everything from punches to half-frozen creams. The construction itself - a mould lined with one frozen mixture and filled with another - is the classic bombe glacée of French professional confectionery, simplified for a domestic cook with a hand-cranked freezer and a tub of ice. The insistence that the fruit not freeze is the mark of someone who had eaten the alternative.