No. 3150

Malakoff Cream

Creme Malakoff

Have eighteen to twenty ounces of Genoese cake (No. 3239) or biscuit (No. 3231) cut into not too thick slices. Cut up some candied fruits, such as apricots, greengages and pineapple, in small dice, adding whole candied cherries. With seven or eight egg-yolks, a pint of milk and ten ounces of sugar prepare an English cream (No. 42); when thick and nearly cold mix with it four spoonfuls of dissolved gelatine, strain and stir on ice to reduce it to the correct consistency (it must be very light); then mix with it five or six spoonfuls of whipped cream. Incrust a souffle pan (Fig. 182) on ice. Soak the sliced biscuit half with rum and the other half with kirsch or Curacoa; spread them in layers in the pan and pour the cream over; bestrew with the candied fruits, and repeat until the pan is entirely full and forms a dome on top; keep it on ice for half an hour. Cover the dome with a thin coat of apricot marmalade (No. 3675), then cover with sweetened and flavored whipped cream; decorate with the same cream, and place the pan on a napkin to serve at once.

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For the Modern Kitchen

Ranhofer writes for a professional pastry kitchen with an ice chest, so the quantities are loose and the timings assume equipment most home cooks no longer have. The hinge is the custard: it must be cooked to nappe and then cooled and lightly set before the whipped cream goes in, or the whole mold weeps.

The English creamCrème anglaise from 7–8 yolks, 1 pint milk and 10 oz sugar, stirred over low heat until it coats a spoon, somewhere around 175–180F; much above that and it risks curdling, so keep it off a hard simmer and strain it whatever happens, as the recipe directs.
"Four spoonfuls of dissolved gelatine"Genuinely ambiguous — it means four spoons of a gelatine solution of unstated strength, not four spoons of dry gelatine. For a pint of custard plus whipped cream, a modern cook would work from a standard soft-set ratio and test a spoonful on a cold plate before committing the batch.
Genoese and biscuitThe recipe offers a choice between Ranhofer's Genoese cake (No. 3239) and his biscuit (No. 3231); the biscuit is the drier whipped-egg type of sponge, which takes up syrup and spirit better. A bought plain sponge or a good ladyfinger sponge sheet stands in; avoid anything with a tight, moist crumb, which will not take the spirits.
Incrusting the pan"Incrust on ice" means bedding the mold in a tub of ice and coarse salt to chill it hard before filling. A metal charlotte or soufflé mold set in the freezer for twenty minutes does the same job. Line it with plastic film if you intend to turn it out.
Setting timeHalf an hour on salted ice is far colder than a refrigerator. Allow at least four hours, or overnight, in the fridge before glazing and decorating.
The soaking liquorsHalf the sponge in rum, half in kirsch or curaçao. Brush rather than dip — genoise waterlogged with neat spirit collapses under the weight of the cream.
Apricot marmaladeNo. 3675 is a sieved apricot preserve used as a glaze, not a chunky jam. Warm apricot jam, sieved and brushed on thin, gives the same seal under the whipped cream.
Candied fruitCandied apricots and greengages are specialty items now; candied pineapple, cherries and good-quality mixed peel are the practical substitutes. Rinse off surface syrup and dry the dice, or they streak the cream.
YieldAround 20 oz of sponge plus a pint-based custard should fill a mold of roughly two quarts and serve ten to twelve.

A Little History

Malakoff is one of a small family of dishes generally traced to the Malakoff redoubt, the fortification whose capture in September 1855 decided the siege of Sevastopol in the Crimean War; the French commander was made Duc de Malakoff, and the name is said to have been attached in that period to a handful of new preparations, most famously the charlotte malakoff of sponge, kirsch and almond cream. Ranhofer's version, published in The Epicurean (1894) out of his years as chef at Delmonico's in New York, keeps the essentials of that model — sponge soaked in spirits, layered with a rich cream, molded on ice — but builds it on an English cream lightened with gelatine and whipped cream rather than a butter-and-almond base, and finishes it as a decorated dome. It belongs to the era when a cold entremets was a display piece: assembled in a chilled mold in a kitchen with its own ice supply, glazed, piped, and sent out on a napkin to be served at once before the dining room's warmth reached it.