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Neapolitan Ices or Ice Cream
Prepare three ice creams, or creams and fruit ices or sponge ices, of different colors and flavors, and fill the mold (already made freezing cold) with them in equal layers. This is best done by filling one of the lids higher than its rim and leveling it off, then pushing the mold down into it and then adding the other two layers as evenly as possible. Put on the top lid, draw half a dozen rubber bands around each mold to keep the lids in place, fill the interstices with butter and then place the molds in the freezing tub and cover them with pounded ice and salt. Let them remain 2 or 3 hours to harden. Some regard should be had to the compatibility of flavors chosen as, for instance, lemon and chocolate do not taste well together, but chocolate and cinnamon and vanil a do, and an almond flavored caramel cream is suitable with red grape and white cherry ices.
Ices are said to have been introduced into France from Italy by Catherine de
This is an assembly method rather than a formula: three finished ices are layered in a sealed mold and ripened hard in an ice-and-salt bath. Everything depends on the components being frozen and the mold being cold before you start.
- The hinge: work cold and fastChill the mold and both lids in the freezer for at least an hour, and keep the three ices at soft-scoop firmness rather than melting. Any layer that slumps will bleed into the next and the cut faces will be muddy instead of striped.
- The moldThe mold Andrews describes has a lid at each end, the classic Neapolitan brick form; such molds were commonly tin or pewter, though the recipe does not say. A metal loaf pan lined with plastic wrap or parchment overhanging the sides works the same way; press each layer level with an offset spatula before adding the next.
- Butter in the intersticesThe butter is a gasket, not an ingredient. It seals the seam between lid and body so brine cannot seep in and salt the ice cream. With a modern lined pan, a double wrapping of plastic film and foil does the job.
- Freezing tub, ice and saltPounded ice with rock salt, commonly reckoned at about three parts ice to one part salt by volume, brings the bath well below freezing. A domestic freezer at 0F or below will harden the brick with no brine at all and no risk of leakage, though it may want longer than the two to three hours given here.
- Two or three hours to hardenTake this as a minimum for ripening rather than a target. A full-size brick benefits from overnight; unmold by dipping the outside briefly in warm water and slice with a knife rinsed under hot water between cuts.
- Sponge icesSponge ices were ices lightened with whisked egg white or meringue, softer and more aerated than a plain water ice. They freeze less hard than the other layers, so a sponge ice is best put in the middle where it is insulated on both sides.
- Pairing flavorsThe author's warning holds up: acid fruit against chocolate reads as two separate desserts. Keep to one family, as with the chocolate, cinnamon and vanilla trio, or bridge two contrasts with a neutral third layer such as the almond caramel cream suggested here.
- YieldA standard 9 by 5 inch loaf pan takes about 6 cups of ice in total, 2 cups per layer, and gives twelve to sixteen slices.
The truncated last sentence points at one of the most durable legends in food writing: that Catherine de' Medici brought ices to France from Italy on her marriage in 1533. Food historians have found no contemporary evidence for it, and the story appears to have been assembled long after the fact; frozen desserts spread through Italy, France and England in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries by way of professional confectioners and the technique of chilling with ice and salt. The name Neapolitan is a nod to Naples, whose confectioners had a wide reputation, and by the late nineteenth century it was attached specifically to the molded brick of contrasting layers, sliced to show its stripes.