Easter Egg Desserts

This is a molding technique rather than a fixed formula, and it stands or falls on temperature control. The whole point is a two-tone egg that cuts into slices showing an orange "yolk" in a white "white."

• The hinge: work fast and coldBoth the ice cream and the ice want to be firm but still pliable, and the packed mold should be kept hard-frozen (in period practice, buried in ice and salt) until the moment of unmolding. Softened ice cream packed at room temperature will bleed one layer into the other and lose the egg effect.
• "Wet melon mold"An oval melon mold of the period was tin or aluminum, made in two parts (a body and a close-fitting lid), commonly holding somewhere around 1 to 2 quarts. Rinsing it with cold water helps release. A modern stainless or silicone dome, pudding basin, or two matched metal bowls clamped together will do the same job.
• Packing orderLine the mold with a shell of vanilla about an inch thick, pressing it up the walls with the back of a spoon, fill the hollow with orange ice, then cap with vanilla and press the lid down. Any gap left in the shell will show as a scar on the finished egg.
• Orange iceThis means a water ice: orange juice, sugar syrup, no dairy. Modern sorbet is the closest available equivalent; a creamy orange sherbet will blur the color line.
• "Served immediately"Unmold by dipping the closed mold briefly in cool water and inverting onto a chilled platter, then slice and plate without delay. The recipe's insistence on a cold platter is the point: a warm one will soften the base.
• YieldThe original specifies nothing. With a mold of roughly a quart and a half, half-inch slices will give something like eight to ten servings, and rather more vanilla than orange ice keeps the "yolk" reading as a center rather than a stripe.
• The angel foodPresumably a plain accompanying slice; the recipe says nothing about frosting. Baking it ahead is a convenience, and slightly dry angel cake is generally easier to cut into neat slices.