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Noisette Bomb
Strawberry Ice I 1/2 cup sugar 1/2 cup chopped blanched filberts 3/4 cup hot caramel syrup Yolks 4 eggs 1 1/3 cups heavy cream 1/2 tablespoon vanilla Few grains salt Caramelize sugar, add nut meats, turn into a buttered pan, cool, then pound in mortar and put through a puree strainer. Beat egg yolks until thick, add gradually caramel syrup, and cook in double boiler until mixture thickens; then beat until cold. Fold in cream beaten until stiff. Then add prepared nut meats, vanilla, and salt. Line melon mould with ice, turn in mixture, pack in salt and ice, and let stand three hours.
A bombe: a mould lined with strawberry ice and filled with a caramel-hazelnut frozen custard, then packed in salt and ice until set. The whole thing depends on the lining being frozen hard before the filling goes in.
- "Line melon mould with ice"Here ice means the strawberry ice named at the head of the ingredients, not ice cubes. Spread it in an even half-inch layer against the chilled mould, freeze it solid, then fill the cavity.
- FilbertsHazelnuts. Blanch by toasting at 350F for 10-12 minutes and rubbing off the skins in a towel; the papery skins turn bitter and gritty in the finished bombe.
- Caramelized sugar with nutsThis is praline. Melt the half cup of sugar dry until amber, stir in the nuts, pour onto a buttered pan and cool until brittle. A food processor replaces the mortar and puree strainer, but pulse rather than run it or the praline turns to paste.
- Hot caramel syrupA separate item from the praline sugar: sugar caramelized and then let down with water to a pourable syrup. It must be hot going into the yolks, and added in a thin stream with constant beating or the yolks will scramble.
- The custard stageCook over water only until it coats a spoon, around 170-175F. Beating it cold before the cream goes in is not optional; warm custard deflates the whipped cream and the bombe freezes dense.
- Freezing without a churnThere is no stirring once it is moulded, so the cream must be whipped to firm peaks to carry air. In a modern freezer the packed mould can simply be left at 0F, allowing rather longer than the recipe's three hours; the original salt-and-ice pack works with rock salt and coarse ice, period manuals suggesting something on the order of one part salt to three or four of ice.
- UnmouldingDip the mould in cool water for a few seconds, wipe, and turn out onto a chilled platter. Let it stand 10 minutes in the refrigerator before slicing so the wedges cut clean.
- YieldAbout a quart of filling; a 1 1/2-quart melon mould lined with strawberry ice serves eight to ten in wedges.