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Peach Bombe
Scald one pint of cream and one and one-half cups of granulated sugar till the mixture looks blue and thin. Take from the fire and add one pint of uncooked cream. When cool add the juice from a pint can of white or pink peaches, one teaspoon of vanilla and one-half teaspoon of peach extract; freeze. When nearly frozen add the peach pulp, mix in thoroughly and pack till you are ready to mold it. Any simple form will do for this, a melon mold is very good.
Have it as cold as possible and line it with the ice cream, leaving a cavity in the middle. Fill this with a vanilla mousse, made of one pint of cream, whipped very stiff, four tablespoons of powdered sugar, a few drops of vanilla and the same of orange extract. Put on the cover, bury in ice and salt and leave to ripen for three hours. If you find the outside is not deep enough in color, a suspicion of the damask-rose color paste will improve it.
A two-part frozen mold: a peach ice cream shell around a whipped-cream mousse centre. The original assumes a hand-cranked churn and a supply of block ice and rock salt, but the structure adapts to a modern machine and freezer without much trouble.
- "Till the mixture looks blue and thin"This is a visual cue for a scalded cream-and-sugar syrup, not a custard: heat until the sugar has fully dissolved and the mixture thins and takes on a faintly bluish cast. There is no egg here, so there is nothing to curdle and nothing to bring to a set temperature.
- Quantities in modern termsOne pint of cream is 2 cups; the base uses 1 quart of cream in total, plus 1 1/2 cups sugar. That is a very rich, very sweet mix by current standards, and it is deliberate — sugar and fat are what keep a hand-packed bombe scoopable rather than solid.
- A pint can of peachesOld canning pints ran about 16 fl oz; a standard modern 15-oz can is close enough. Drain it and reserve the syrup, which is the "juice" added to the cooled base. "White peaches" here means a canned white-fleshed variety, milder and less acidic than yellow.
- Peach extractStill sold, though not in every supermarket; it is assertive, so half a teaspoon in a quart of base is the right order of magnitude. Leaving it out gives a gentler peach flavour that relies on the fruit alone.
- Freezing without ice and saltChurn the base in an ice cream machine until it is at soft-serve stage, fold in the chopped peach pulp, then transfer to the freezer to firm up before lining the mold. Adding the fruit late is the point — pulp churned from the start turns to icy shreds.
- Lining the moldChill the mold in the freezer for at least an hour, work fast, and press the ice cream up the sides with the back of a cold spoon to an even half-inch, leaving a clear cavity. Return it to the freezer to set hard before you spoon in the mousse, or the two layers will slump into each other.
- The mousse centreCream whipped stiff with 4 tablespoons powdered sugar and flavouring freezes soft and light because of the air beaten into it; do not overwhip to the point of graininess. Whip it cold, fill, cover, and freeze.
- "Ripen for three hours"In a modern freezer, four to six hours or overnight is closer to right. Unmold by wrapping the outside in a cloth wrung out in hot water for a few seconds, then let the bombe stand 10 minutes before slicing.
- Damask-rose colour pasteA pink food-colouring paste. Any modern gel colour does the same job; add it to the base before churning, since streaking it into frozen ice cream will marble rather than tint.
- YieldFills a standard melon mold and serves 10 to 12 in wedges.
The bombe belongs to the grand French repertoire of moulded ices that reached American cookbooks through hotel and caterer's practice in the later nineteenth century — an outer shell of one ice lining a chilled mould, a lighter mousse or bombe mixture at the centre, the whole packed in ice and salt to "ripen" until service. The name comes from the spherical or dome-shaped moulds originally used, though the melon mould was a common domestic substitute. The canned peach places the recipe in a period when ice cream still meant a crank freezer and a delivery of block ice, but commercially canned fruit in syrup was cheap and available year round, and it let a home cook produce a dessert in February that a generation earlier belonged to August.