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Four Yolks of Eggs
One whole Egg.
Two ounces of Loaf Sugar.
Four ounces of glacé Fruits.
One ounce of grated Pistachio Nuts.
One dessertspoonful of Maraschino.
One dessertspoonful of Brandy.
Half a pint of Milk. Half a pint of whipped Cream.
Make a custard with the eggs, milk, and sugar.
Strain it, and when cold put it into the freezingpot; when half frozen add the dried fruits cut in pieces, the pistachios, Maraschino and brandy, and lastly, add the whipped cream, and refreeze. Wet the mould, and decorate it according to taste with pistachios and glacé fruits, and fill with the frozen mixture. Seal up the mould, and pack into a charged pail, and freeze till wanted.
This is an iced pudding — what a French kitchen would call a bombe — and the recipe is printed in the book's usual shorthand, with the first ingredient standing as the title. Read "Four Yolks of Eggs" as line one of the ingredient list.
- The missing milkThe method calls for milk but no quantity is given anywhere in the list. For four yolks plus one whole egg and 2 oz sugar, something in the region of half a pint would make a custard of the right consistency, but the original is genuinely silent and any figure is an inference.
- Custard temperatureCook the yolks, milk and sugar over gentle heat, stirring, until it coats the spoon — around 175-180F. Past that it curdles, and straining afterwards will not rescue the texture, only remove the lumps.
- Freezing-pot and charged pailThe "freezingpot" is a sorbetière, a lidded metal canister turned by hand in a wooden pail packed with crushed ice and coarse salt — that packed pail is what "charged" means. An ice-cream machine does the same work; churn until the mixture is thick and half-frozen before the additions go in.
- "Dried fruits"The instruction refers back to the 4 oz of glacé fruits — candied cherries, angelica, pineapple, apricot — not to raisins or currants. Chop them small and cold, or they sink and freeze into hard nuggets.
- Grated pistachiosAn ounce of blanched pistachios, grated rather than chopped, so they colour and flavour the cream without giving it grit. Reserve a few whole halves for the lining.
- MaraschinoA dessertspoonful is about two teaspoons. Use a genuine maraschino liqueur, not the syrup from a jar of cherries; with the brandy this is enough alcohol to soften the set slightly.
- Lining and sealing the mouldWet the mould, press the pistachios and cut fruit against the chilled sides, then fill and press down firmly to avoid air pockets. "Seal up" meant luting the lid with butter or a strip of paste so brine could not seep in; in a home freezer, press cling film to the surface and cover tightly.
- Setting and servingGive it at least four hours packed in ice and salt, or overnight in a freezer at its coldest setting. Dip the mould briefly in warm water to turn out. With the cream and fruit, and whatever milk is assumed for the custard, it will make something over a pint — six to eight small portions, which is the right size for something this rich.
Moulded iced puddings of this kind were a grand finish to a late-Victorian dinner, and the pattern is thoroughly French: a cooked egg custard frozen in a sorbetière, enriched with whipped cream, spiked with liqueur, studded with candied fruit, and set in a decorated mould to be turned out whole. The glacé fruits and maraschino both point to Italy by way of the French repertoire — maraschino, distilled from marasca cherries around Zadar on the Dalmatian coast, was one of the fashionable flavourings of the period and turns up constantly in bombes and charlottes. Making one at home meant buying ice, breaking it, and salting a pail, so the dish was a marker of a household with a cook and a service entrance; the recipe's brisk assumption that a charged pail is standing ready tells you as much about the intended reader as the ingredients do.