No. 3026

Crusts with Madeira

Croutes au Madere

Wash in tepid water four ounces of candied citron peel, two ounces of lemon peel and two ounces of orange peel, all cut in quarter-inch squares. Put these into a saucepan with two ounces of Smyrna raisins and two ounces of currants, well picked and scalded in boiling water, then drained, and cover over the whole with boiling Madeira syrup and keep the saucepan well closed in a bain-marie until ready to serve. Make a croustade from a close and stale kitchen loaf, having it four to six inches high, and shaped like a vase. Slit the top near the edge and pass a skewer through its depth to keep it straight while cooking, the fry to a fine light golden color, drain and sponge it, remove the skewer and the slit piece on top. Scoop out a little of the inside crumbs, then fasten it on the center of a dish with a paste made of flour and egg-white. Cut slices of kitchen bread five-sixteenths of an inch in thickness and from this stamp out ovals three by two inches; brown them on both sides in clarified butter, drain and cover with apricot marmalade (No. 3675); dress them in a circle around the croustade or else substitute slices of cooked brioche, having them the same size; lay these flat on a baking sheet, besprinkle with sugar and brown in the oven. Moisten the crusts with the syrup and arrange the fruits all around. Fill the croustade with red stewed cherries (No. 3688) and angelica and serve with a separate apricot sauce, diluted with Madeira wine. (See Humboldt pudding No. 3100.)

← No. 3025 Crusts with Fruits a la Mirabeau Hot Entremets — Puddings, Fritters & Soufflés No. 3027 Crusts with Peaches or with Pears →

For the Modern Kitchen

A composed plated dessert from Ranhofer's Delmonico repertoire: a fried bread vase on a platter, ringed with butter-fried croutons under apricot marmalade, with Madeira-steeped candied fruit spooned around. Most of the work is assembly, and the recipe leans on cross-references the original book supplies elsewhere.

The hinge: keep the fruit hot and closedThe candied peel and dried fruit are covered with boiling Madeira syrup and held in a tightly closed pan set in a bain-marie until service, so the fruit steeps in gentle, even heat without the syrup reducing. Left open over direct heat the syrup would concentrate instead.
Madeira syrupNot defined on this page. It means a sugar syrup let down with Madeira; the original gives no proportions here, so any figures are a modern reconstruction. Add the wine off the heat so the aroma survives.
Kitchen loafA plain, close-crumbed white sandwich loaf, a day or two old. Modern open-crumb artisan bread will collapse when hollowed and will drink far too much butter; a firm supermarket pain de mie or brioche loaf behaves closer to what is intended.
Frying the croustadeClarified butter or a neutral fat at 340-360F. Deeper than a shallow pan will manage if the vase is four to six inches high, so a deep saucepan is easier; the skewer keeps it from listing. "Sponge it" means blot with cloth or paper after draining.
The flour-and-egg-white pasteA structural glue for fixing the croustade upright on the platter, not something to eat. A stiff slurry of flour and raw egg white, dried briefly, is all that is meant.
Ingredients that have shiftedSmyrna raisins are what we now sell as sultanas or golden raisins; currants here are dried Zante currants, not fresh blackcurrants. Angelica is candied angelica stem, still sold by cake-decorating suppliers and worth ordering if you want the green against the cherries.
Oven for the brioche optionThe original gives no temperature, only "brown in the oven." If you substitute brioche slices for the fried croutons, sugar them and brown in a hot oven, watching closely, since sugared surfaces catch quickly.
MeasurementsFive-sixteenths of an inch is a scant 8 mm, thick enough that the crouton stays firm under marmalade. Quarter-inch dice of peel is deliberate: large enough to read as fruit on the plate.
YieldThe quantities of fruit and the size of the croustade suggest a centerpiece for six to eight, portioned at table with the apricot sauce passed separately.

A Little History

Charles Ranhofer, chef at Delmonico's in New York, published The Epicurean in 1894 as a complete professional system, and this entry shows how it worked: one numbered formula leaning on three others -- for its apricot marmalade, its stewed cherries and the related Humboldt pudding -- with its apricot sauce left unnumbered. Cro tes au mad re belongs to a nineteenth-century French family of cro tes desserts, in which fried or oven-crisped bread stood in for pastry and carried syruped fruit; the hollowed loaf shaped like a vase is the croustade, a display piece of the era when a dessert was expected to be architecture as much as food. Madeira earned its place in such dishes because the fortified, heat-treated wine kept well in a warm kitchen and its baked, nutty character stood up to sugar, which is also why it appears through this book in sauces and syrups where a table wine would vanish. The whole construction is a reminder that stale bread, candied peel and dried fruit were pantry staples, and that a grand restaurant dessert could be built largely from things already on the shelf.