Home › Frozen Desserts › Chocolate Pudding (Frozen)
Chocolate Pudding (Frozen)
Beat the yolks of three eggs, half a cup of sugar and a level saltspoon of cinnamon together until very light; add slowly a cup of milk heated to boiling, beating well; then pour gradually over an ounce and a half of unsweetened chocolate melted by standing over hot water. Place this mixture in a double boiler and stir constantly until it thickens and coats the spoon. When cold, add a cup of rich cream, vanilla to flavor, and freeze. Prepare and have ready a cup of candied fruits, figs and seeded raisins. Cut the candied fruit and figs in thin slices, the raisins in halves. Make a syrup of a quarter of a cup each of sugar and water, add the fruit, boil until it is tender and plump, then drain. Add the drained fruit to the frozen mixture when it is almost done, and finish freezing.
When done, put in a quart melon mold, and let stand an hour or more packed in ice and salt. Whip a cup of cream, sweeten with two tablespoons of sugar, and flavor with either a tablespoon of brandy or of Maraschino.-A. Sulzbacher.
This is a bombe in all but name: a cooked chocolate custard, churned, studded with syrup-plumped fruit, then packed into a mold to firm up. The hinge is the custard — take it off the heat the moment it coats the spoon, because a chocolate custard that curdles cannot be rescued and will churn grainy.
- SaltspoonA saltspoon is a scant quarter teaspoon. A quarter teaspoon of cinnamon is right for this quantity.
- Custard temperature"Thickens and coats the spoon" is 170–175°F. Stir constantly over water that is hot but not boiling; above about 180°F the yolks begin to scramble.
- Rich cream"Rich cream" here means a heavy cream; modern heavy or whipping cream is the closest equivalent. A lighter cream or half-and-half will freeze harder and taste thin.
- ChocolateAn ounce and a half of unsweetened chocolate is one and a half squares of a standard baking bar. Melt it over hot water, not direct heat, and add the hot custard base gradually or it will seize.
- Freezing"Freeze" meant a hand-crank freezer packed with ice and coarse salt. Chill the base thoroughly first, then churn in an ice cream machine and fold the fruit in during the last minute of churning, as the original directs.
- The fruitBoiling the candied fruit, figs and raisins in a light syrup is not decorative — it keeps them from freezing into hard pellets. Drain them well and cool them before they go in, or they will melt the churned mixture.
- The melon moldA quart melon mold is a two-part oval tin whose halves fit together. Any quart mold or loaf pan lined with plastic wrap works. Instead of packing in ice and salt, cover the surface closely and ripen in the freezer for two to three hours until firm enough to unmold.
- Yield and servingAbout a quart, filling the quart mold the recipe names, serving six. The sweetened whipped cream flavored with brandy or maraschino is most likely meant as a sauce alongside the unmolded pudding, though the recipe does not say so.
Frozen desserts held a prominent place in American cookbooks around 1900 because ice had become cheap and reliable: commercial ice harvesting and delivery put a packed freezer within reach of an ordinary household, and the crank freezer with its ice-and-salt jacket was standard equipment. A molded frozen custard like this one belongs to the family the French called bombe glac e, shaped in a fancy tin and "ripened" for an hour or more so it could be turned out whole at the table. Melon molds were among the common shapes, which may be why the recipe names it without explanation. The candied fruit, figs and raisins simmered in syrup point to the same tradition of tutti-frutti ices that ran through nineteenth-century confectionery. The recipe carries a contributor's name, as many printed recipes of the period did.