No. 3209

Ministerial Pudding

Pouding Ministeriel

Wash in hot water one pound of cherries (demi-sucre) and lay them to marinate for one hour in a light syrup well flavored with kirsch. Make a bavarois preparation with vanilla (No. 3135), only using a little less whipped cream than usual; add to it a few tablespoonfuls of kirsch. Have a cylindrical timbale mold incrusted in ice; pour a layer of the preparation into the bottom, and on this scatter some of the cherries; when hard pour in another layer and more cherries, continuing the process until the mold is full. Then cover it with a round sheet of paper and a lid covered with ice, and leave till entirely hard. At the last moment unmold the pudding and surround the base with a circle of fine cherries (demi-sucre) previously marinated in kirsch. Serve a sauce-boat of whipped cream with vanilla and kirsch at the same time as the pudding.

← No. 3208 Lafayette Pudding Cold Entremets — Creams, Jellies & Charlottes No. 3210 Renaissance Pudding →

For the Modern Kitchen

Ranhofer assumes you have a cross-reference recipe, an ice cave and a cook who knows what demi-sucre means. Here is what the page leaves unsaid.

The hinge: freeze in layers, not all at onceThe cherries will sink and pool at the base if the bavarois is poured in one go. Each layer must be set firm to the touch before the next is added, which in a home freezer means roughly 20-30 minutes per layer, or longer in the refrigerator.
"Incrusted in ice"The mold was bedded in a tub of crushed ice and coarse salt, the period's answer to a freezer. A mold set in the refrigerator works for a gelatin bavarois; a freezer sets it faster but risks ice crystals in the cream, so pull it once firm.
Cherries demi-sucreSemi-candied cherries, drained of most of their syrup but not dried or glacé-hard. Good-quality amarena or brandied cherries stand in; drain them well, since loose syrup will streak the cream and slacken the set.
The bavarois cross-referenceNo. 3135 is a vanilla Bavarian cream: an egg-yolk custard cooked to the nappe (170-180F, never boiling), gelatin dissolved in it, cooled to the point of thickening, then folded with whipped cream. Ranhofer gives no reason for using less whipped cream than usual, but the effect is a denser mixture, which holds suspended fruit better than a very light one.
KirschA dry cherry eau-de-vie, not a sweet liqueur. Modern kirsch runs 40 percent alcohol and a few tablespoons in the bavarois plus more in the marinating syrup is enough; too much alcohol will slow or defeat the gelatin.
Timbale moldA straight-sided cylindrical mold; the recipe gives no capacity, so judge it by the volume of bavarois you have. A charlotte mold or a loose-based cake tin lined with plastic gives the same profile.
UnmoldingDip the mold in warm water for a count of five, dry the outside, run a thin knife around the rim and invert onto a chilled plate. Anything longer in the water and the outer layer weeps.
YieldThe recipe gives no number of servings; count on the volume of your mold. Both the pudding and the whipped-cream sauce should go to the table cold, and the pudding will begin to slump fairly quickly in a warm room.

A Little History

Charles Ranhofer put The Epicurean together in 1894 after some three decades as chef at Delmonico's in New York, and its cold entremets section reads like an inventory of the moulded creams that closed a formal dinner in the period. "Ministerial" belongs to the same habit of flattery as the Lafayette and Renaissance puddings on either side of it: French kitchens often named a dish for a minister, a diplomat or a court, and the label appears to describe the occasion rather than any distinguishing technique. The dish itself is a bavarois, a cooked custard set with gelatin and lightened with whipped cream, generally traced to the early nineteenth-century French kitchen and often associated with Carême. What dates this version is the ice: a molded cream layered and hardened in a salted ice bath was labor a restaurant brigade could supply more easily than most private households.