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Carnot Sherbet
Have in readiness an orange water ice, in which mix a little carmine, kirsch and orange-flower water. It should be dressed in a small nest with a little bird perched on its edge; the bird, the inside and the bottom should be made of gum paste, and the outside of the nest should be imitated with spun sugar and the grass with fillets of angelica. It should be served immediately on its completion.
This is an assembly rather than a formula: Oscar assumes you already have an orange water ice on hand and spends his words on the presentation. The one thing that decides success is temperature discipline — the spun sugar and the ice are enemies.
- The baseAn orange water ice is a sorbet of orange juice, sugar syrup and water, no dairy and no egg. Roughly 1 cup sugar dissolved into 3 cups strained juice and water, churned and hardened, gives a workable base; sorbet syrups are commonly pitched rather higher, so adjust for sweetness and texture.
- CarmineCarmine is the crimson pigment from cochineal insects, sold today as carmine or cochineal extract. It is still a legal food colour but declared as an allergen risk in some markets; a drop of red food colouring does the same job. "A little" means barely enough to blush the orange pink.
- Kirsch and orange-flower waterKirsch is unsweetened cherry brandy, not a sweet cherry liqueur. Alcohol depresses the freezing point, so keep it to a tablespoon or two per quart or the sherbet will never set firm. Orange-flower water is potent — start at half a teaspoon per quart and taste.
- AngelicaCandied angelica stems, once a standard confectioner's green, are now sold mainly by specialist suppliers around Christmas. Cut into thin fillets they stand in for grass. Candied citron peel tinted green, or thin strips of green marzipan, are the usual substitutes.
- Gum pasteGum paste here is the confectioner's modelling paste of icing sugar, egg white and gum tragacanth (today more often tylose or CMC). It dries rock hard and is edible in theory only; the nest lining and the bird are structural, made a day or two ahead.
- Spun sugarSugar cooked to hard crack, 300-310F, then flicked in threads over an oiled form. It collapses in humid air within an hour or two, which is the real reason for the closing instruction. Spin it last, in a dry room, and do not refrigerate it.
- Serve immediatelyNot fussiness. Once the spun sugar meets the frozen ice it wicks moisture and turns to syrup, and the gum paste softens at the join. Build the plates as they leave for the table.
- YieldThe original gives none. Treat it as one nest per guest, about 3-4 oz of ice each, and scale the gum paste work accordingly — the assembly, not the freezing, is what limits how many you can serve.
Named-in-honour desserts were the working currency of grand hotel menus in the 1890s, and a sherbet called Carnot is generally taken to commemorate Marie Fran timesois Sadi Carnot, President of France from 1887 until his assassination in 1894; the Waldorf, whose maitre d'hotel was Oscar Tschirky, is often credited with the salad that outlived such tributes. The nest-with-bird conceit belongs to a period when a sorbet was not simply a course but a piece of table architecture, arriving before the roast to clear the palate and to be admired. Spun sugar, gum paste and candied angelica were the standard vocabulary of that work, and a hotel of the Waldorf's rank kept pastry cooks whose whole day was such ornament. The insistence on serving the moment it is finished is the honest admission underneath the display: nothing in the dish holds for long.