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Frozen Plum Pudding
Cut up a quantity of preserved fruits, such as dates, candied citron, seedless raisins, sultanas and figs; put this in a stewpan with some rum (or any desirable liquor) and steep for one hour. Then make a custard in the usual manner of i quart of cream, 8 yolks and 6 ounces of sugar, add enough burnt sugar color to give it a coffee color, and a good flavoring of curacoa and freeze. When frozen hard enough mix in the fruit and continue freezing a few minutes longer. Next imbed the melon molds in salted ice and line them with orange water ice, then fill in the fruited batch and again cover the top with orange water ice; then lightly secure the cover and pack the molds in ice and let remain for two hours. This pudding is served in slices with a rum sauce.
A soda-fountain bombe: a rum-and-fruit custard ice cream jacketed in orange water ice and molded. The original assumes a hand-crank freezer, a packing tub of ice and rock salt, and a fountain man who already knows the base recipes.
- The hinge: work in stages, keep everything hardEach layer must be firm before the next goes in, or the water ice and the custard bleed together into a muddy middle. Chill the mold in the freezer, spread the orange ice in a shell about half an inch thick, freeze that solid, then fill and cap.
- "Freeze" means a churnUse an ice cream machine for the custard; the salted-ice packing described here is only for hardening and molding the finished pudding. A home freezer at 0F or below does the same job as the ice-and-salt tub, though salt ice is faster.
- Custard proportions and temperature1 quart cream, 8 yolks, 6 ounces sugar (about 7/8 cup by volume). Cook to 170-175F, until it coats a spoon, then strain and chill thoroughly before churning.
- Burnt sugar colorThis is caramel coloring: sugar cooked to dark brown and let down with a little hot water. A tablespoon or two is enough for the "coffee color" wanted; add it to the hot custard so it dissolves evenly.
- CuracoaModern spelling curaçao, the orange liqueur. "A good flavoring" is unquantified; a couple of tablespoons per quart is a reasonable reading, and too much added alcohol will keep the base from setting firm.
- Alcohol and freezingDrain the steeped fruit before folding it in and keep the loose rum out of the base. Spirits depress the freezing point, and an over-liquored pudding will never slice.
- Melon moldsRibbed, lidded tin or pewter bombe molds, football-shaped, in pint to quart sizes. A metal bowl or loaf pan lined with plastic wrap works; press the lid or a wrap seal down tight so no ice water reaches the pudding.
- Orange water iceNo recipe is given here because the book assumes one on hand: fresh orange juice sweetened with sugar syrup, frozen in the churn. Keep it slightly softer than usual so it spreads into the mold without cracking.
- Yield and servingNo yield is given; a quart of cream churned, plus the fruit and the water-ice lining, will fill something closer to two quarts of mold. Unmold by dipping the outside briefly in cool water, cut with a warmed knife, and pour over a rum sauce.
Frozen plum pudding was a standing item in American confectioners' and soda-fountain repertoires from the late nineteenth century into the 1920s: the dried fruit, spirits and dark color of an English boiled Christmas pudding transposed into a molded ice. The technique behind it is the French glacier's bombe, in which a mold is lined with one frozen mixture and filled with another, and the family it belongs to includes Nesselrode pudding, the chestnut-and-candied-fruit ice that was a common sight on fashionable dessert menus of the same decades. Its appearance in a soda book is a reminder of how much more than sodas a good fountain sold; the same marble counter that drew a glass of phosphate was expected to turn out molded ices by the slice for holiday and banquet trade, and the melon mold packed in salted ice was standard equipment.