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Fruit Pudding
1 pt. whipping cream 1/4 lb. candied cherries 1 doz. macaroons, crushed fine 1 small slice candied pineapple Cut cherries and pineapple into fine pieces, add teaspoon vanilla, add crushed macaroons, sweeten with powdered sugar, and fold in whipped cream. Pack in salt and ice and let stand 4 hours. Serves 6.
An unchurned frozen cream in the biscuit tortoni family: nothing is cooked, and the whipped cream does all the structural work. The one thing to get right is the folding, since there is no churn to build texture later.
- Pack in salt and iceThis means burying a covered mold in a bucket of crushed ice mixed with rock salt; proportions varied, period directions for packing a mould running somewhere between one part salt to two and one to four parts ice, enough to bring the brine below freezing. A modern freezer at 0F does the same job in a covered loaf pan or metal mold; four hours is about right, and it should keep a few days covered.
- The creamA pint is two cups of heavy or whipping cream, which whips to roughly a quart. Whip to soft peaks rather than stiff; over-whipped cream folds into the fruit and crumb mixture badly and can turn buttery.
- MacaroonsThe macaroon meant here is most likely the crisp almond kind, close to Italian amaretti, though soft coconut macaroons also existed in the period. A dozen crushed fine gives roughly a cup of crumbs; since sizes vary, about 3 oz by weight is a reasonable guide.
- Sweetening is left to youNo quantity is given. Powdered sugar dissolves readily in cold cream, which may be why it is called for rather than granulated; start with a third of a cup and taste, remembering that candied fruit and macaroons are already sweet and that cold blunts sweetness.
- Candied fruitA quarter pound of candied cherries comes to roughly half to two-thirds of a cup once chopped. Cut everything finer than seems necessary, as large pieces of candied fruit freeze rock hard and are unpleasant against soft cream.
- ServingServes 6 as written, in small portions. Let it stand five to ten minutes at room temperature before unmolding or scooping; straight from a modern freezer it is harder than the ice-and-salt original would have been.
This belongs to the large family of still-frozen creams that ran from the mid-nineteenth century through the 1930s under names like frozen pudding, tortoni and biscuit glace, all of them relying on whipped cream rather than a churn to keep the mixture from setting into a solid block. It is the kind of assembled dessert that needed no oven and no ice-cream freezer to crank.