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Frozen Pudding II
1 quart cream 3/4 cup sugar 1/4 cup rum 1 cup candied fruit 8 lady fingers Cut fruit in pieces, and soak several hours in brandy to cover. Mix cream, sugar, and rum, then freeze. Line a two-quart melon mould with lady fingers, crust side down; fill with alternate layers of the cream and fruit, cover, pack in salt and ice, and let stand two hours. Brandied peaches cut in pieces, with some of their syrup added, greatly improve the pudding.
This is a bombe — a churned rum cream frozen in a mould lined with sponge fingers. Fannie Farmer assumes an ice-and-salt freezer and a tin melon mould; both have easy modern substitutes, but the alcohol is the thing to watch.
- Keep the alcohol in checkRum and brandy depress the freezing point, so a heavy hand gives you a soft, soupy centre that never sets. The 1/4 cup rum in a quart of cream is about the limit; drain the fruit well rather than tipping in its soaking brandy too.
- "Cream" means heavy cream"Cream" -- Period recipes used 'cream' loosely, often meaning thin cream (around 18-20%) rather than today's heavy cream. Heavy cream (36% or more), unwhipped, is the safest modern substitute and gives the richest result. Ultra-pasteurised cream works, though non-UHT is preferable if you can get it.
- "Freeze" means churnStep one is an ice-cream freezer: the mixture is churned to a soft-frozen state, not simply put in a cold place. Any modern machine does it. Churn until thick and just holding its shape, then work quickly — it softens fast.
- The salt-and-ice packFor the two-hour ripening the old rule is roughly one part rock salt to four parts crushed ice, packed around a sealed mould in a wooden tub or cooler. A modern freezer at 0F does the same job; give it three to four hours, or overnight.
- Mould substituteA two-quart melon mould is a two-part tinned form with a close-fitting cover. A 2-quart metal bowl, pudding basin or loaf tin lined with plastic wrap works, and the wrap makes unmoulding a matter of lifting rather than dipping in warm water.
- Lady fingers, crust side downThe browned side goes against the mould so it faces out when turned out. Use crisp savoiardi rather than soft sponge fingers, as they absorb the cream without collapsing. Eight will not go far in a two-quart form, so buy well over the stated number.
- Ambiguous quantity"Brandy to cover" is undefined and depends on your bowl; a few tablespoons over a cup of chopped fruit is enough. Drain before layering.
- YieldAbout 2 quarts, serving 10 to 12 in slices. Unmould onto a chilled plate and cut with a warm knife.
Frozen puddings of this sort are the American parlour version of the French bombe glacée: a lined mould filled with frozen cream and fruit, then "ripened" in an ice-and-salt pack until firm enough to turn out whole. They appear repeatedly in late nineteenth-century American cookbooks because ice was cheap and reliable in northern cities by then, and the hand-cranked freezer is often said to have become common middle-class equipment — Farmer's Boston Cooking-School book devotes a long chapter to ices on that assumption. The candied fruit and brandied peaches point to the same pantry logic: preserved fruit was available year-round when fresh was not, and the liquor both flavoured the pudding and kept the fruit from freezing into hard pellets. The technique's descent from the moulded, iced bombes of French confectionery is generally taken for granted, and the ornamental melon mould was sold for exactly this purpose.