No. 3208

Lafayette Pudding

Pouding Lafayette

Prepare a little meringue preparation (No. 140) with six egg-whites; divide it in two and flavor one of them with orange, having it slightly colored with a little carmine, and the other flavored with vanilla. Distribute these two preparations into small parts the size of a pigeon's egg, and poach them in milk the same as snow eggs (No. 3163); drain them at once on a cloth. Have a cupola-shaped mold incrusted in ice, pour into the bottom an English cream (No. 42) flavored with rum and mixed with a little gelatine, adding to it a few spoonfuls of whipped cream; let it get hard, then dress on it a layer of the poached eggs, alternating the two colors, and strew over some shredded pistachios; pour another layer of cream on top, then more eggs and pistachios; and so on until the mold is entirely full. Let the pudding harden in the ice-box for two hours; serve with a bowl of sweetened strawberry pulp flavored with maraschino.

← No. 3207 Harrison Pudding Cold Entremets — Creams, Jellies & Charlottes No. 3209 Ministerial Pudding →

For the Modern Kitchen

Ranhofer writes in cross-references, so the page is really an assembly diagram: meringue (No. 140), English cream (No. 42) and snow eggs (No. 3163) are all made elsewhere. Everything here depends on two temperatures — the milk that poaches the meringues and the custard that binds them.

The hinge: poach, do not boilThe milk for the meringues should sit at 170–180F, barely trembling. At a boil the whites inflate, then collapse into rubbery pellets when drained. Two minutes a side is enough for pieces the size of a pigeon's egg — roughly a rounded tablespoon each.
What the cross-references containNo. 140 is a meringue of beaten whites and sugar. No. 42 is an English cream — crème anglaise: yolks, sugar, milk, stirred until it coats a spoon, which in modern terms means around 175-180F. No. 3163 is oeufs à la neige, the poaching method borrowed wholesale here. The proportions of those cross-referenced recipes are not given on this page.
Gelatine"A little gelatine" is unquantified. For a custard base that must hold poached meringues in suspension, figure about 1 tablespoon of powdered gelatine (one envelope) per pint of finished cream — firm enough to unmold, still soft on the spoon.
CarmineCarmine is cochineal, a red made from scale insects; it is still sold as a food colour but is not vegetarian and is a known allergen for a small number of people. Any red colouring works, and a very small amount is intended — the orange half should read pale pink beside the white vanilla half.
"Incrusted in ice"The mould was set into cracked ice, the nineteenth-century way of chilling a mould hard; Ranhofer then leaves the finished pudding in the ice-box for two hours. A metal charlotte or bombe mould set in the coldest part of the refrigerator does the same work; each layer of cream needs 20-30 minutes to set before the next goes on, or the meringues float.
PistachiosBlanch shelled pistachios in boiling water for a minute and rub off the skins before shredding, which is what gives the bright green Ranhofer wanted. Unskinned nuts read brown against the cream.
UnmouldingDip the mould in warm water for five or six seconds, dry it, and invert onto a chilled plate. A gelatine set this light will slump if the pudding sits out; keep it refrigerated until it goes to the table.
The sauce and the yieldSweetened strawberry pulp is simply strawberries crushed or sieved with sugar to taste, no cooking, with maraschino stirred in at the end. Ranhofer gives no mould size or number of servings; six whites' worth of meringue layered with cream will fill a mould of roughly a quart.

A Little History

The Epicurean (1894) is Charles Ranhofer's record of thirty-odd years as chef at Delmonico's in New York, and its dessert chapters run through dozens of moulded puddings named for statesmen, diplomats and patrons — Harrison and the "Ministerial" pudding sit on either side of this one. Naming a cold entremet after the Marquis de Lafayette was an old and safe piece of American flattery: his 1824–25 farewell tour left his name attached to towns, streets, cakes and gingerbread across the country, and by Ranhofer's day "Lafayette" on a menu signalled patriotic gentility more than any French regional connection. The construction itself is pure haute-cuisine bookkeeping — a bombe mould filled in alternating strata of rum-scented crème anglaise lightened with whipped cream and set with gelatine, studded with tinted poached meringues, so that each slice shows a mosaic of pink and white. It belongs to the moment when reliable ice, commercial gelatine and a large kitchen brigade made such layered cold sweets practical for a restaurant, and largely impossible at home.