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Macaroon Bisque
1 cup heavy cream
18 macaroons
Powdered sugar
6 Maraschino cherries
Vanilla
Whip a cup of cream until stiff, sweeten with powdered sugar and flavor lightly with vanilla. Stir in six macaroons broken in small pieces, but not powdered. Pile in sherbet glasses with a border of the whole macaroons and decorate with marshmallows or Maraschino cherries. This is an excellent emergency dessert.
A four-ingredient icebox dessert that depends entirely on the quality of the macaroons. Everything else is technique you already have.
- Which macaroonThis means the crisp almond macaroon of the period — an almond-paste-and-egg-white cookie, dry enough to shatter and to soften pleasantly in cream. Coconut macaroons or French macaron shells will not behave the same way; Italian amaretti are the closest easy substitute.
- Sugar quantityThe original gives no amount. One to two tablespoons of powdered sugar per cup of cream is right, and lean toward the lower figure since the macaroons are already sweet.
- CreamThe recipe says to whip until stiff; in practice, stopping at soft-to-medium peaks is safer, because folding in the macaroon pieces will firm it further. Ultra-pasteurized cream works but takes longer and holds less air.
- Broken, not powderedThe instruction to break rather than crush is the hinge. Pea-to-thumbnail pieces stay distinct and give the dessert its texture; crumbs dissolve into the cream and leave a uniformly gritty sweetness.
- The marshmallowsThey appear in the method but not the ingredient list. If used, they would have been the soft cut-square confection of the era — quarter them, or skip them and use the cherries alone.
- TimingAssemble and serve within an hour. Left longer, the border macaroons go limp and the folded pieces lose their bite, which is the whole point of the dish. Chilling the glasses beforehand buys a little time.
- YieldOne cup of cream fills four small sherbet glasses generously, or six modestly. Six is what the list implies: six cherries, and with six of the eighteen macaroons broken into the cream, twelve left over for borders.
In American usage around 1900, bisque had a second life well away from the soup pot: it named a cream or ice cream carrying crushed macaroons, nuts, or cake crumbs, and "macaroon bisque" and "biscuit tortoni" belonged to the same family of confectioner's desserts served in sherbet or paper cases. This one skips the freezer entirely, and the closing line — "an excellent emergency dessert" — tells you exactly why it earned a page. A tin of bought macaroons, a bottle of maraschino cherries, and cream: the recipe turns all three into something presentable without heat.