Carolina Border with Champagne

This is an assembly rather than a recipe: Ranhofer expects you to have five other numbered preparations in hand before you begin. Read it as a diagram — a molded rice-and-apricot ring, a cake plug, a dome of champagne jelly, and a border of jelly dice.

• What a "pain" isIn The Epicurean a fruit pain is a sieved fruit purée set with gelatin and lightened with cream — nothing to do with bread. Made "a little thicker than usual" means a stiffer mixture, whether by less liquid or more gelatin, because the rice and whipped cream folded in afterwards will slacken it and it must hold a ring shape unsupported.
• The riceNo. 160 is rice cooked slowly in milk or cream with vanilla until swollen and tender, then cooled — the same base as riz à l'impératrice. Use a short-grain pudding rice; long-grain stays separate and gives a gritty, broken texture in the set cream.
• Savarin moldA shallow ring mold with a rounded channel, named for the form used to bake savarins; a plain ring or tube mold of comparable size is the working equivalent. The hollow center is the whole point of the dish, so do not substitute a solid mold.
• Pounded iceNineteenth-century kitchens set creams by burying the mold in crushed ice, often with salt — a mixture considerably colder than a modern refrigerator. A refrigerator will set it, more slowly; a freezer faster but at the risk of ice crystals in the rice. Chill the mold itself before filling.
• Champagne and gelatinAlcohol weakens a gelatin set, so a champagne jelly needs a firmer proportion than a plain fruit jelly, and it must be handled cold — warm it to dissolve the gelatin and you drive off both the sparkle and the aroma the dish is named for. Macédoine here means small dice of mixed fruit suspended in that jelly, set in layers so the fruit does not all float.
• The Genoese padThe disc of Genoese sponge is structural: it fills the base of the ring's hollow so the jelly dome sits proud rather than sinking out of sight. Cut it to three-quarters of the mold's depth as directed, and brush it with syrup or it will drink moisture from the jelly and slump.
• Ribboned jelly croutonsNo. 3184 is jelly set in thin colored layers, one at a time, then turned out and cut into small cubes — "croutons" in the confectioner's sense, not toast. Cut them cold with a knife dipped in hot water so the layers stay sharp.
• UnmoldingRanhofer's "one moment before serving" is the hinge. Dip the mold three or four seconds in warm water, invert onto a chilled dish, and assemble immediately; a rice cream this rich softens visibly at room temperature and the jelly dome will begin to weep.
• YieldNo serving number is given, and the text offers no way to fix one.