No. 3430

Manner of Freezing, Neapolitan Style

Maniere de Glacer a la Napolitaine

Have a tin freezer (sorbetiere) capable of holding sixteen quarts of preparation; imbed it in salted ice, and pour into it eight quarts of composition, then turn the freezer from right to left, and as soon as it becomes easy to turn seize the edges between the thumb and first finger of the right hand, and move it with a continuous motion. After a sufficient quantity of ice adheres, remove it with a copper spoon (Fig. 618), to detach it from bottom to top. Another tin freezer must be imbedded beforehand. Put into this second freezer the ice taken from the first; another person must now work this ice until it becomes perfectly smooth, and then transfer it once more into a third freezer, packed in salted ice, to preserve it. Ices made this way are remarkably smooth, and can be molded at once.

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For the Modern Kitchen

This is a method rather than a formula: Ranhofer is describing how the Delmonico's pastry department froze large batches of ice by hand, with no crank and no dasher. Nearly all of it translates to modern equipment if you understand what the three cans are for.

The hinge: the ice never rests in the can it froze inEvery scrape is moved to a fresh chilled can and worked smooth, then moved again for storage. The point is that the frozen layer is broken up and beaten while still soft, so no coarse crystal ever gets the chance to grow — this is why he claims the result is remarkably smooth.
SorbetièreA plain tin pail, imbedded in salted ice and spun by hand. There is no paddle inside; the operator's hand does the churning and a spoon does the scraping. A modern ice cream maker with a dasher performs the same two jobs at once.
"Composition"Ranhofer's term for the base to be frozen: a cooked custard, a fruit water or a syrup from the preceding numbers in this section. It should be cold before it goes into the freezer or the salted ice will be spent before the mixture sets.
Salted iceCracked ice layered with coarse rock salt, roughly three parts ice to one of salt by volume, which brings the bath well below freezing. The bath needs to reach at least halfway up the can, and the brine that collects should be drained and the packing renewed as it melts.
Eight quarts in a sixteen-quart canHalf full is deliberate. It leaves room for the hand and spoon to work and for the volume the mixture gains as air is beaten in.
Copper spoonThe scraper shown in Fig. 618. A stiff silicone spatula or a steel bench scraper does the same work; the instruction to detach "from bottom to top" means shave the whole frozen wall in one sweep rather than digging at it.
Two workersThe recipe assumes a second person waiting at the next can. Working alone, halve the quantity and expect the batch to soften while you switch vessels.
Scale and yieldEight quarts is restaurant volume, about sixty-four half-cup servings. For a home version, follow one of the base recipes in this section, churn it, then beat it smooth and transfer it to a chilled container to harden in the freezer.
"Can be molded at once"Freshly worked ice at this stage is the texture of thick paste, which is what packing into pewter or tin molds requires. Ice that has hardened in storage would need working again before it could be molded.

A Little History

The Epicurean (1894) is Charles Ranhofer's record of thirty-odd years running the kitchens at Delmonico's in New York, and its ices section reads like a departmental manual — machine freezers, long freezers, hand freezers, molds and bombes each given their own numbered entry. The "Neapolitan" label here refers to the method, not to the striped brick that later took the name in America: the name is traditionally traced to Naples' reputation for ice and sorbet work and to the Neapolitan and Sicilian confectioners said to have spread through the courts and cafés of Europe, carrying the city's name along with their hand-spun sorbetière technique, though that account is more a received explanation than a documented one. By Ranhofer's day crank freezers with dashers were common in both households and hotels, and the fact that he still sets out the three-can hand method suggests it was kept for the finest work, where a cook's judgment about when to scrape produced a texture the machines of the period could not match.