No. 3210

Renaissance Pudding

Pouding Renaissance

Put ten egg-yolks into a vessel, beat them well with half a pound of sugar, and dilute with a quart of boiling milk, into which a split vanilla bean has been infused; stir well, and thicken on the fire. As soon as the preparation is done remove from the range, suppress the vanilla, and add three gelatine leaves softened in cold water; beat it from time to time until the gelatine is entirely dissolved, and then pass the preparation through a fine strainer into a vessel and leave to cool slightly. Have prepared a preserved fruit macedoine cut in small dice, such as apricots, pears, plums, pineapple and cherries (demi-sucre), and pour some maraschino over. Also prepare a few chestnuts cut in quarters, and steep them in maraschino. Put a timbale mold on chopped ice, place in it a layer of the preparation and leave it to set. Then scatter the fruits and chestnuts on it; also some lady fingers soaked in maraschino; over these pour another layer of the preparation, and continue in this manner until the mold is full. Leave it on ice for an hour and a half, and just when ready to serve dip it hastily in hot water, and invert the pudding on a cold dish; pour a cold English vanilla cream sauce (No. 42) over, serving some of it separately.

← No. 3209 Ministerial Pudding Cold Entremets — Creams, Jellies & Charlottes No. 3211 Valois Pudding →

For the Modern Kitchen

A vanilla custard set with gelatine, layered in a mold with liqueur-soaked fruit, chestnuts and ladyfingers — essentially a bavarois built in strata. The hinge is the custard: it must thicken without boiling, or the eggs curdle and no amount of straining will save the texture.

Thickening the custardTen yolks and a quart of milk want gentle heat and constant stirring, off a full boil; the custard is done at 175–180°F, when it coats a spoon and holds a drawn line. Ranhofer's "thicken on the fire" assumes a cook who can read the pan, not a rolling simmer.
The gelatine is ambiguous"Three gelatine leaves" cannot be converted with confidence: leaf size and setting strength were not standardized in Ranhofer's day, and how his leaves compared with modern sheets is not documented. Modern silver-grade leaves run about 2 g each, and a quart of custard that must unmold cleanly generally wants somewhere in the region of 15-18 g total, so it is safer to go by weight than by leaf count.
Half a pound of sugarThat is one cup plus two tablespoons, or about 225 g, for a quart of milk — sweet by modern taste but necessary here, since the sugar is also carrying the maraschino and the fruit syrups.
Demi-sucre fruitFruits demi-sucre are half-candied — preserved in syrup but not crystallized, still soft and moist. Good-quality candied apricot, pear, plum and pineapple in syrup, drained, stand in; avoid the hard glacé mixed peel sold for fruitcake.
ChestnutsThese should be cooked or preserved chestnuts, not raw. Vacuum-packed cooked chestnuts or drained marrons in syrup, quartered and steeped in maraschino, give what the recipe intends.
MaraschinoThe original means the dry, clear cherry-pit liqueur, not the pink syrup from a jar of cocktail cherries. A modern maraschino liqueur is the correct bottle.
Chopped ice and the timbale moldA timbale mold is a straight-sided or slightly tapered deep mold. Setting it on chopped ice is simply refrigeration; a cold fridge does the same, and each layer must be firm before the next goes on or the fruit sinks.
Unmolding"Dip it hastily in hot water" means three to five seconds, no more, then invert immediately onto a chilled plate. Longer and the outer wall slumps.
The sauce and the yieldNo. 42 is a cold English cream — creme anglaise, vanilla custard without gelatine, thoroughly chilled. Ranhofer gives no yield; a timbale of this size and richness would stretch to a dozen small servings.

A Little History

The Epicurean (1894) is Charles Ranhofer's record of thirty-odd years cooking at Delmonico's in New York, and this pudding shows the house style exactly: a French bavarois, layered with imported preserved fruit and liqueur, and given a grand-sounding name. Nineteenth-century French kitchens named garnishes and desserts freely after periods, places, ministers and royalty — the neighboring entries here are a Ministerial Pudding and a Valois Pudding — and "Renaissance" signals ornament and abundance rather than any historical dish. What makes the recipe possible at all is sheet gelatine, which by the 1890s was a reliable commercial product; before that, a cook wanting a molded cream rendered it from calves' feet or isinglass over hours. Maraschino, distilled from marasca cherries around Zadar on the Dalmatian coast, was among the most fashionable liqueurs on American restaurant lists of the period, which is why it appears three times in one dessert.