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Frozen Pudding a la Marshall
Make the same custard as for frozen plum pudding, using vanilla flavor instead of curacoa. When frozen add the following ingredients, previously prepared: One pound of stewed pineapples, 1 pound of white pears, 4 ounces of sultanas, steeped in 1 gill of maraschino, ½ pound of lady cake, cut into dice and sprinkle with kirschwasser. First mix the fruit into the batch, then lightly beat in the lady cake with 1 pint of double whipped cream. Next in order is to line the molds, differing only in the use of another kind of water ice, in this case raspberry ice is substituted, the interior filled with the fruited batch and finished in the usual manner, served with maraschino sauce. To make this sauce observe the same instruction as for rum sauce, using maraschino for flavoring.
This is a bombe: a mold lined with raspberry ice and filled with a fruited frozen custard. The original assumes you have already read the frozen plum pudding and rum sauce entries elsewhere in the book, so treat it as an assembly formula rather than a standalone recipe.
- The hinge: line the mold while the ice is soft but not slushyThe raspberry ice has to be spreadable enough to push up the sides in an even layer, then firm enough to hold that shell while you fill it. Chill the mold hard first, work fast, and refreeze the lined shell solid before the custard goes in, or the two layers will marble together and the slice will show no border.
- A gillHalf a cup, four fluid ounces. The maraschino here is a soaking liquid for the sultanas, not a flavoring for the whole batch.
- Lady cakeA white butter cake made with egg whites and no yolks, close-grained and fairly dry, usually flavored with almond. Any firm white or pound cake cut into small dice works; a day-old crumb absorbs the kirschwasser without collapsing.
- White pearsMost likely pears stewed in a light syrup and kept pale rather than a named variety. Well-drained canned pears in halves, diced, are the practical equivalent. Drain the pineapple thoroughly too, since carried-over syrup makes the frozen batch soft and icy.
- SultanasGolden raisins. Steeping them in spirit is not decorative: unsoaked dried fruit freezes into hard pellets, while alcohol-plumped fruit stays chewable at freezer temperature.
- Double whipped creamProbably heavy cream whipped to soft peaks, added at the end. The original says to beat it in lightly with the cake; keep the hand light so the crumb is coated rather than crushed.
- Alcohol and freezingBetween the maraschino, the kirschwasser and the sauce, this mixture carries enough spirit to depress the freezing point noticeably. Expect it to need longer in the mold than a plain custard ice, and to soften quickly once turned out.
- Finishing "in the usual manner"In period practice this meant sealing the filled mold, burying it in ice and coarse salt for several hours, then dipping briefly in warm water to unmold. A domestic freezer set as cold as it goes will do the same job overnight.
The soda fountain of the 1900s was expected to serve the same frozen sweets as a hotel dining room, and the bombe -- a mold lined with one frozen mixture and filled with another -- was the showiest thing in the repertoire. Names like this one were part of the sales pitch, though whom this one honors is uncertain; one possibility is Agnes B. Marshall, the London cookery school proprietor whose books on ices were widely known in the late nineteenth century and whose name carried authority with American dispensers. The construction itself is French, descended from the elaborate molded glaces of the Paris restaurant trade, and the reliance on maraschino and kirschwasser reflects a period when liqueur-soaked fruit was standard in frozen desserts and the soda fountain had not yet been reshaped by Prohibition.