No. 3292

Cannelons a la Celestine

Roll out some puff paste parings (No. 146) one-eighth of an inch thick; cut this into five-eighths of an inch wide bands, each fourteen inches long; egg them over, and roll them spirally around some cornucopia-shaped molds an inch and a half in diameter and three inches long; as they are done set on a baking sheet, then place this in a hot oven. When partly cooked dredge with powdered sugar, and finish baking; when cooked unmold and leave to get cold. When serving fill each one with whipped cream into which mix some pastry cream with vanilla (No. 46), crushed macaroons and currant jelly (No. 3670).

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For the Modern Kitchen

A puff-paste cornucopia baked on a mold, filled à la minute with a lightened vanilla cream. Ranhofer assumes you have paste trimmings on hand and cross-references his own numbered recipes; here is what those numbers stand in for.

Puff paste paringsNo. 146 is Ranhofer's puff paste; "parings" are the offcuts left from trimming other pastries, which no longer puff evenly and so suit spirals. A sheet of thawed all-butter commercial puff pastry does the same job.
A hot ovenRanhofer gives no temperature. For puff paste this is generally taken as somewhere around 425F. The paste needs the initial blast to lift the layers, and since the strips are thin they will bake quickly.
The dredging stepSugar goes on partway through baking, not at the start, or it scorches before the pastry sets. Once dusted, the surface caramelizes into a thin glaze in the last few minutes -- watch it, since the line between glazed and burnt is a minute or two.
Cornucopia moldsMetal cream-horn or lady-lock molds, still sold, are the modern equivalent. Butter or oil them lightly, overlap each turn of the strip, and unmold while the pastry is still warm or the sugar glues itself on.
Egg wash"Egg them over" means brushing beaten egg on the bands before winding, so the spiral seals to itself. Keep it off the mold and off the baking sheet, where it welds.
The fillingNo. 46 is vanilla pastry cream. Fold cold pastry cream into whipped cream (Ranhofer gives no proportion), then add crushed macaroons and a little currant jelly. Nineteenth-century macaroons were almond-based and unfilled; Italian amaretti are the closest thing on a shelf today.
Fill at the last momentThe recipe specifies filling when serving. A filled horn soon softens; bake the shells ahead, keep them dry and airtight, and pipe the cream as they go out.
YieldFourteen-inch bands at five-eighths of an inch wide use very little paste; a single commercial sheet of puff pastry will give a dozen or more horns.

A Little History

Charles Ranhofer, chef at Delmonico's in New York, published The Epicurean in 1894 as a record of the restaurant's repertoire, running to some 3,500 numbered recipes cross-referenced against one another -- which is why this one reads as a chain of numbers rather than a list of ingredients. Cannelon is related to French cannelle in its older sense of a pipe or tube, and describes a rolled or tubular preparation; the same word covers a rolled meat preparation elsewhere in French cookery. Names of the a la Celestine type are, in this period, decorative rather than documented. The section it sits in, "Small Cakes for Entremets," points to the structure of a formal nineteenth-century dinner, where sweet entremets came after the roast and were expected to be numerous and small.