No. 3052

Grenades with Cherries

Grenades aux Cerises

Divide a pound and a quarter of brioche paste (No. 130) into twelve even parts; roll each one into a separate ball and lay these in bottomless oval molds, three inches long, one and three-quarters inches wide and one and three-quarters inches high; let rise until they are almost full, then cook in a hot oven; as soon as done unmold the cakes on a grate and let cool off; then pare them with a knife to give them the appearance of an egg. Put ten egg-yolks and eight ounces of sugar in a bowl and dilute with a quart of cream flavored with vanilla, then strain through a tammy. Soak the brioches in this cream, drain and roll them in pulverized macaroons; dip them in beaten eggs, roll in bread-crumbs and plunge into hot frying fat to fry to a fine color; drain, wipe and dish them up in a circle; fill the interior space with a compote of cherries with prunelle and serve separately some of the syrup from the compote.

← No. 3051 Fruits a la Creole Hot Entremets — Puddings, Fritters & Soufflés No. 3053 Mazarine with Pineapple and Kirsch →

For the Modern Kitchen Do not make this as written.

Ranhofer's grenades are brioche buns soaked in vanilla custard, breaded and deep-fried, then ringed around a cherry compote. Most of the difficulty is in the handling: a custard-logged crumb falls apart in hot fat unless it is sealed and firmed first.

The hinge: chill before fryingAfter the second breading, the brioche is saturated and fragile. Refrigerate the coated cakes at least 30 minutes so the crumb sets and the shell adheres, and use bread that is a day old — fresh brioche drinks the custard and collapses. Soak briefly, seconds rather than minutes, and drain on a rack.
The custard is raw as writtenTen yolks, 8 oz sugar and a quart of cream, strained and used cold, is an uncooked crème anglaise base. The brief fry sets the crust but will not carry the centre to a safe temperature. Cook the custard to 180F and cool it before soaking, or use pasteurized eggs.
Oven and fat temperaturesA "hot oven" for enriched brioche is usually taken as somewhere around 400-425F; small cakes of this size should bake in roughly 15-18 minutes. Fry at about 350-360F - much hotter and the crumb coating colours before the interior warms through.
Bottomless oval moldsPresumably plain metal rings or bands set on a buttered sheet, and equivalents are scarce. Oval or round egg rings work; so does baking the balls free-form on a sheet, since the recipe has you pare them to an egg shape with a knife afterwards anyway.
TammyA tammy is a fine worsted straining cloth. A chinois or a fine sieve lined with muslin does the same job of catching chalazae and any set egg.
Pulverized macaroonsDry almond macaroons ground to a coarse powder. Italian amaretti, crushed and sieved, are the closest thing on a shelf today; if they are soft, dry them in a low oven first or they will clump on the wet brioche.
PrunelleA sloe liqueur, sweet and almond-scented from the crushed stones, still made in France but not widely stocked. Kirsch or a good maraschino gives a compatible result with cherries.
Quantities and yieldA pound and a quarter of brioche paste gives twelve cakes. The custard quantity is far more than twelve small brioches will absorb - a pint with five yolks and 4 oz sugar is ample, and the remainder can be cooked out as a sauce.

A Little History

Grenade is French for pomegranate, and by extension for the hand grenade; the name here appears to refer to the small rounded shapes formed in the molds, though Ranhofer immediately tells the cook to pare them into eggs instead. The dish belongs to the large family of fried, soaked breads that runs from pain perdu through croûtes and beignets soufflés, dressed up for a Delmonico's dinner with a double breading of macaroon crumbs and a compote perfumed with sloe liqueur. The Epicurean (1894) is Charles Ranhofer's record of what he cooked over more than thirty years at Delmonico's in New York, and its hot entremets section reflects a period when a formal menu still closed with a warm sweet before the ices.