Home › Puddings And Desserts › Montrose Pudding
Montrose Pudding
Yolks of six eggs 1 quart of good cream 1 cup of granulated sugar 1 tablespoonful of vanilla 1 pint of strawberry water ice Put one pint of cream on to boil in farina boiler. Beat the yolks and sugar together until light, stir them into the boiling cream, and cook and stir until it thickens (about one minute). Take from the fire, add the remaining pint of cream, and the vanilla, let stand until cool, and freeze. When frozen, pack into a round or melon mould, leaving a well in the centre. Fill this well with the strawberry water ice, cover it over with some of the pudding you have taken out. Pack in salt and ice, and let stand until wanted (not less than two hours). Serve the following sauce with it.
This is a bombe: a vanilla custard ice cream moulded around a core of strawberry sorbet. Nothing about it is difficult, but the original assumes a hand-cranked freezer and a supply of block ice.
- Farina boilerAn old name for a double boiler. Cook the custard over simmering water rather than direct heat, or the yolks will curdle before the cream thickens.
- "About one minute"Judge by temperature, not the clock: the custard is done at 175-180F, when it coats the back of a spoon and a drawn finger leaves a clean track. Strain it as it comes off the heat.
- Strawberry water iceA water ice is a sorbet made from fruit juice or purée, sugar syrup and water, with no dairy. About a pint of a good strawberry sorbet, softened just enough to spoon, is what the recipe wants.
- CreamA quart is 4 cups; the recipe says only "good cream" and does not specify the richness. Modern heavy cream works throughout, though period cream was often lighter. Half heavy, half whole milk gives a lighter result that still freezes smoothly.
- FreezingChurn the cooled custard in an ice cream machine until it is the texture of soft-serve. It must still be spreadable when you line the mould, so work quickly and keep the mould chilled.
- Packing in salt and iceThis was the usual way to hold a frozen dish in a domestic kitchen before home freezers: the mould was buried in a tub of crushed ice and rock salt, which sits well below 32F. A domestic freezer does the same job. The two-hour minimum is real -- the bombe needs that long to set firm enough to unmould and slice.
- UnmouldingDip the mould in warm water for a few seconds, run a thin knife round the rim, and invert onto a chilled plate. Return it to the freezer for a few minutes if it softens before serving.
- The missing sauceThe text ends by promising a sauce that appeared as a separate entry in the book. A thin strawberry purée sweetened to taste, or a plain vanilla custard sauce, suits the pudding.
- YieldThe churned custard plus the pint of water ice comes to something over two quarts; a mould of that size or a little larger will serve ten to twelve.
Frozen bombes of this kind were the showpiece of the late nineteenth-century summer table, and books of "hot weather dishes" leaned on them heavily: an ice could be made in the cool of the morning, packed in a tub of salt and ice, and brought out hours later without relighting the range. The construction -- one flavour moulded as a shell around a contrasting core -- is the classic bombe glac",recates the recipe.