No. 3196

"pain" of Chestnuts a la Beotie

Pain de Marrons a la Beotie

Incrust in ice a flat, dome-shaped mold; decorate the inner sides with fanciful cuts of assorted candied fruits, dipping each piece in half-set jelly, then coating with a layer of rather firm blanc-mange (No. 3138), having it a third of an inch thick. Cover the mold with a lid with ice on top. Put into a vessel four gills of sweet chestnut puree (No. 3136), dilute it with four spoonfuls of maraschino and a few gills of thick vanilla syrup, beat the preparation on ice to thicken and as soon as this occurs incorporate into it about four or five gills of good whipped cream; two minutes later add a small salpicon of candied pineapple and then pour the whole into the hollow of the mold; replace the lid, covering it at once with more ice, and after the lapse of an hour dip the mold quickly into hot water, wipe and turn the cream on a cold dish.

← No. 3195 "pain" of Bananas, Havanese Cold Entremets — Creams, Jellies & Charlottes No. 3197 Pains" of Strawberries with Cream-Small →

For the Modern Kitchen

Ranhofer writes for a brigade with an ice room and a cook who already knows the three cross-referenced recipes by number. Translated for a home kitchen, this is a chestnut-and-maraschino mousse set inside a blancmange shell, unmolded and served cold.

The hinge: chill the shell hard before it is filledThe blancmange lining has to be firm and thoroughly cold, or the chestnut cream will melt through it and the decoration will slide when the mold is turned out. Line the mold, refrigerate or freeze it until the coating is set solid, then fill.
Gills and spoonfulsA gill is half a cup, so four gills of chestnut puree is 2 cups and four or five gills of whipped cream is 2 to 2 1/2 cups (measured after whipping). Ranhofer's "spoonfuls" are generally read as tablespoons, which would make the maraschino about 1/4 cup. "A few gills" of vanilla syrup is genuinely vague; start with 1/2 cup and taste, since the puree at No. 3136 is called a sweet puree.
"Incrust in ice"The original means packing the mold in a tub of crushed ice and rock salt, with more ice piled on the lid, which is how a nineteenth-century kitchen held something below freezing. A freezer does the same work; use a metal dome mold or bowl for fast, even chilling.
Blanc-mange and chestnut pureeNo. 3138 is a cooked almond-milk pudding set with gelatin or isinglass; any firm gelatin-set almond blancmange will serve, made slightly stiffer than usual so it holds as a 1/3-inch shell.
SalpiconA salpicon here is simply candied fruit cut into small, even dice, about 1/4 inch. Fold the pineapple in last and briefly, once the mixture has begun to thicken, so it stays suspended rather than sinking.
Beating on iceThe chestnut mixture is whisked over ice until it thickens by cooling, not by aeration. Modern chestnut cream is looser than Ranhofer's, so if it will not body up, bloom and dissolve about 1 1/2 teaspoons of gelatin in a little of the warm syrup and beat that in before the cream goes in.
Setting timeOne hour in ice and salt is optimistic for a domestic freezer if you want a clean unmolding; give it three to four hours, or overnight in the refrigerator if the mousse is gelatin-set.
UnmoldingA quick dip in hot water means one or two seconds, then wipe and invert immediately onto a chilled plate. Longer and the blancmange shell glazes over and loses its cut edges.
YieldThe filling and lining together fill roughly a 1 1/2-quart mold and serve 8 to 10 as a cold entremets.

A Little History

Pain in this sense has nothing to do with bread: in nineteenth-century French kitchen language a pain was any sweet or savory preparation packed into a mold and turned out in a loaf or dome, and Charles Ranhofer's The Epicurean (1894), the record of his decades at Delmonico's in New York, runs a series of them together. "A la Beotie" refers to Boeotia, the region of central Greece north of Attica; classical writers made Boeotians a byword for rustic simplicity, and garnish names of this kind were often chosen for their classical ring rather than any documented local dish. Chestnuts are the plausible link, since they were a poor man's flour crop across the Mediterranean uplands. The elaborate ice work here is worth noting: before mechanical refrigeration, a restaurant of this rank kept an ice room and a stock of crushed ice and rock salt, and molded creams like this one were a visible demonstration that the house could hold a dessert below freezing on demand.