Home › The Waldorf Kitchen › Apricot and Pistachio Ice-Cream
Apricot and Pistachio Ice-Cream
Blanch, peel and pound a small quantity of pistachio kernels, say a quarter pound; boil some milk, and put the yolks of a half dozen eggs into a stewpan, with a little pounded sugar and the boiled milk. Stir over the fire until the eggs begin to thicken. Allow this to become cool, and then add the pounded pistachios and a little green spinach-coloring, straining the whole through a tammy-cloth into a basin. Make a pint or so of apricot puree (by stewing the fruit until soft and then rubbing it through a sieve), mix a pint of syrup, and strain through a sieve. Freeze the two mixtures separately, and serve them moulded together.
Two separate ices — a pistachio custard and an apricot water ice — frozen apart and packed together in a mould. The recipe assumes a professional pastry kitchen and leaves most quantities to judgment, so a few numbers help.
- The hinge: two textures, one mouldThe pistachio side is an egg custard (rich, slow-melting) and the apricot side is a fruit ice with syrup only. Freeze each to a firm but still spreadable state, then pack them into a chilled mould in halves or layers and ripen in the freezer for several hours before unmoulding. If either is fully hard when you pack it, the layers will not bond and the mould will split when turned out.
- Custard temperature"Until the eggs begin to thicken" means about 170–175F on a thermometer, when the custard coats a spoon. Six yolks will set roughly a pint of milk; take it off the heat the moment it thickens or it will scramble and no amount of straining will save the texture.
- Missing measurementsThe milk and sugar are unquantified. A workable reading of a period pistachio custard is 1 pint milk (or half milk, half cream), 6 yolks and about 5 oz sugar. The apricot side calls for a pint of puree and a pint of syrup; the recipe does not say how heavy the syrup should be, though at that proportion it would need to be a fairly rich one, and the result will be sweet by modern taste.
- Tammy-clothA loosely woven woollen straining cloth. A fine sieve lined with two layers of damp cheesecloth does the same job. Pistachios ground in a food processor will not pass through easily; press hard with a ladle, or blend the custard and nuts smooth and strain only for stray skins.
- Blanching pistachiosThirty seconds in boiling water loosens the skins; rub them off in a towel while warm. Skinned kernels are what give the pale green. Salted roasted pistachios will not work here.
- Spinach-colouringPeriod kitchens made green colour by pounding spinach leaves, straining the juice and heating it until the green solids coagulated, then skimming them off. It is flavourless in the small quantity used. A drop of modern food colouring achieves the same thing; unadulterated pistachio custard is a greyish beige, not green.
- Freezing without a churnThe original assumes freezing in a pot or pail packed with ice and salt and worked by hand. A domestic ice-cream machine handles both mixtures. Failing that, freeze in a shallow pan and beat thoroughly every 30 minutes for about three hours — the apricot ice in particular will go coarse and icy if left undisturbed.
- YieldThe apricot side makes about a quart from its pint of puree and pint of syrup; the pistachio side depends on how much milk you use, so roughly two quarts moulded together — twelve to sixteen small servings.
Oscar Tschirky was never the Waldorf's chef — he was its maître d'hôtel — but his 1896 Cook Book by "Oscar" of the Waldorf collected the hotel's working repertoire, and its ice-cream chapter is straight out of the French pastry tradition that ruled American hotel kitchens at the end of the nineteenth century. Moulded ices of two or more contrasting mixtures, packed into metal forms — typically pewter or block tin — and buried in ice and salt until service, were the standard grand finish to a long dinner; the pairing of a green pistachio custard with a golden fruit ice is as much about the cut surface as the flavour. Spinach green was the classic confectioner's colour for pistachio work, used because unblanched nuts alone gave a disappointing colour, and it appears in French manuals well before Oscar's day. Apricots, mostly dried or preserved outside the short summer season, were a fruit a hotel put on a menu with some deliberation, which is part of why the dish is here at all.