No. 3158

Crown Printaniere

Couronne Printaniere

Butter a large Savarin mold, line it with fine flawn paste (No. 135), and cut this off just level with the edge of the mold; cover over the inside with buttered paper and fill it up with cherry pips or dry rice to hold the paste in shape, and cook the crust to a fine color; empty it out as soon as done, unmold and brush over with beaten eggs, push it into a quick oven to attain a good golden color, then leave till cold. Make a fresh fruit macedoine composed of candied cherries (demi-sucre), strawberries and raspberries, quarters of well-pared oranges and a few red currants; besprinkle these fruits with powdered sugar, pour over some maraschino and let macerate for one hour. One moment before serving cover the inside of the croustade with apricot jam, and filling it level with the top with the fruits mask them with currant jelly (No. 3670) and slip it on a dish. Pile the center high with whipped cream and arrange around the crown a circle of handsome greengages and candied cherries (demi-sucre), then serve.

← No. 3157 Crown a la Choiseul Cold Entremets — Creams, Jellies & Charlottes No. 3159 Custard in a Dish →

For the Modern Kitchen

A blind-baked pastry ring filled with liqueur-steeped fruit and crowned with whipped cream — Ranhofer's assembly work rather than a cooking project. Almost everything here hinges on timing: the crust and the fruit meet only at the last moment.

Assemble at the table's edgeThe apricot jam lining and the currant-jelly glaze exist to waterproof the pastry against macerated fruit, and they only buy minutes. Fill and glaze immediately before it goes out, or the shell softens and collapses under the cream.
Flawn paste"Flawn" (flan) paste is Ranhofer's lining paste for tart and croustade shells, a short pastry (usually lightly sweetened) firm enough to stand unsupported once baked; it is close to a pate sucree or a rich pate a foncer. Any sturdy sweet shortcrust that holds a shape will do.
Savarin moldA plain ring mold with rounded sides, the same one used for the yeast cake. A modern metal ring mold or a straight-sided tube pan works; avoid anything with sharp flutes, since the baked shell has to come out whole.
Blind baking with cherry pipsCherry pips were the nineteenth-century reusable pie weight — dry rice, dry beans or ceramic weights are the same idea. Take note that the shell is baked twice: once weighted, then unmolded, egg-washed and returned briefly to set a sealed golden surface.
"Quick oven"A hot oven, roughly 400-450F by the usual nineteenth-century glossaries. The second pass is short -- only long enough to dry and colour the egg wash on the already-cooked crust.
Demi-sucre cherriesCherries candied to about half the usual sugar saturation: softer, less cloying, still recognisably fruit. Ordinary glacé cherries are the nearest thing at retail; rinse off the surface syrup so they do not overwhelm the fresh berries.
MaraschinoThe clear liqueur distilled from marasca cherries, stones and all, not the pink syrup from a jar of cocktail cherries. Use it sparingly: too much and the fruit weeps and floods the shell.
Macedoine and greengagesA macédoine here simply means an assortment of fruit cut to matching size. Greengages are a green-fleshed dessert plum with a short late-summer season; poached or preserved halves stand in when fresh ones are unavailable.
Currant jelly glazeWarm the jelly just to a brushable consistency and no further — boiled down, it sets hard and cracks when the crown is cut. See No. 3670 for Ranhofer's own jelly.
YieldRanhofer gives no yield; a large Savarin mold makes a ring enough for a party of eight or so. Cut it in wedges at the table, since it will not travel once filled.

A Little History

Charles Ranhofer's The Epicurean (1894) records the repertoire he cooked at Delmonico's in New York, and this entry is characteristic of its cold-entremets chapter: no new technique, just an architecture assembled from parts catalogued elsewhere in the book, cross-referenced by number the way a workshop manual refers to standard components. The name is descriptive rather than commemorative — couronne for the crown shape the ring mold produces, printaniere for the spring, though the actual fruit list of strawberries, raspberries, currants and greengages runs well into summer. The Savarin mold is traditionally said to take its name from Brillat-Savarin, the gastronomic writer, by way of the yeast cake Parisian pastry cooks are said to have named in his honour in the middle of the nineteenth century; by Ranhofer's day the mold had detached from the cake and become general-purpose. Serving fresh fruit steeped in maraschino inside a baked shell was a way of demonstrating a kitchen's access to out-of-season and imported goods — candied cherries, oranges, a Dalmatian liqueur — all on one dish.