No. 3291

Boats, Printanier

Bateaux Printaniers

Line a dozen boat-shaped tartlet molds with fine foundation paste (No. 135); cook them white, unmold and leave till cold, then cover the insides with apricot marmalade (No. 3675). Strain through a fine sieve the pulp of four or five sound oranges, mix in with their juice two or three spoonfuls of strawberry pulp, and two or three gills of thick syrup flavored with orange peel (No. 3165) and a little isinglass added. Stir the preparation on ice, work it well to a cream, and then mix in at once about half a pound of small, very fresh-picked strawberries; roll them well in with the above, then take some up with a spoon and fill the small boats, having them well-rounded on top; smoth this into a dome and cover with a layer of freshly made apricot marmalade (No. 3675); let this dry in the air for ten minutes, then decorate the summits quickly with a few spoonfuls of whipped cream pushed through a cornet, having it well drained and only slightly sweetened.

← No. 3290 Banana Boats Small Cakes for Entremets No. 3292 Cannelons a la Celestine →

For the Modern Kitchen

Ranhofer writes for a brigade with a stocked pastry station, so the cross-references do most of the work. The hinge is the setting cream: it must be worked over ice until it is thick enough to mound on a spoon before the strawberries go in, or the filling will slump out of the shells instead of holding a dome.

The moldsBoat-shaped tartlet molds are barquette tins, about 3 inches long, still sold in sets. "Cook them white" means blind-bake the lined shells fully, weighted, until pale gold and dry, with no filling.
Foundation pasteRanhofer's No. 135 is his short lining paste for tartlet shells. Any firm tart dough that holds a crisp edge will do; it needs to stay crisp under a wet filling, so a well-rested, low-hydration dough is best.
GillsA gill is half a cup, so two or three gills of syrup is one to one and a half cups. "Thick syrup" here means a heavy sugar syrup, boiled to dissolve and cooled.
IsinglassIsinglass is a gelatin extracted from fish swim bladders, once the standard clear setting agent for jellies and creams. Powdered or leaf gelatin replaces it directly; the recipe gives no quantity, so judge by the volume of liquid — enough for a soft, spoonable set, not a firm jelly.
Apricot marmaladeNot marmalade in the citrus sense. Ranhofer's No. 3675 is a sieved, reduced apricot preserve used as a glaze and lining throughout the pastry chapters; warmed, strained apricot jam is the working equivalent, and it must be brushed on hot and thin or it will not dry in ten minutes.
Stir the preparation on iceSet the bowl in a larger bowl of ice water and beat steadily. The mixture should reach the stage where it ribbons and just begins to hold, then the strawberries fold in immediately — a moment later and it sets in the bowl.
CornetA cornet is a cone rolled from parchment with the tip snipped off. A small star tip in a piping bag does the same job; the cream should be whipped stiff, well drained of any weeping liquid, and barely sweetened so it reads against the apricot.
Yield and servingTwelve boats, one or two per person as an entremets. They are best within an hour or two of assembly — the gelatin filling weeps and the shells soften if held overnight.

A Little History

The recipe comes from Charles Ranhofer's The Epicurean (1894), the enormous compendium of the cooking he directed at Delmonico's in New York. Printanier means simply "of spring," and here the name refers to the fruit rather than to any set garnish: fresh strawberries and orange, bound in a lightly set cream, at the season when both could be had. Barquettes — boat-shaped shells filled savory or sweet — were standard equipment in a nineteenth-century French pastry kitchen, and Ranhofer runs a string of them through this chapter alongside the banana boats that precede this entry. The isinglass is the period marker: fish-derived setting agents were still in ordinary professional use in the 1890s, though commercial powdered gelatin was already displacing them, and within a generation the older material had all but disappeared from kitchen work, surviving mainly as a fining agent in brewing.