No. 3437

Iced Biscuits a la d'Orleans

Biscuits Glaces a la d'Orleans

Procure a tin box with a cover closing on the outside. The interior should measure eight inches in length, five and three-quarters in width and one and three-quarters deep. Fit the bottom of this with twelve small cardboard cases, all together being the exact size of the bottom of the box and each half an inch high. Pour in sufficient vanilla biscuit preparation (No. 3438) to fill up the tin box to a quarter of an inch below the top, put on the cover and close the joints with butter, then pack the box in salted ice; leave it for at least an hour and a half, being careful that the water does not rise higher than the bottom of the box; take out the box, wipe, remove the cover and finish filling to the top with strawberry water ice (No. 3607); smooth with the blade of a knife, replace the cover and fasten it once more with butter; freeze for one hour longer. Then remove both box and cover, wipe well and pass a thin knife all around the inside. Dip the bottom into hot water, unmold so that it turns over in a single block, then reverse it to have the strawberry ice on top. Divide the biscuit into twelve equal-sized parts, the exact size of the cases, and dress each one on a round piece of fancy lace paper.

← No. 3436 Excelsior Biscuit Ices & Ice Creams No. 3438 Iced Biscuits with Vanilla and Strawberry, M →

For the Modern Kitchen

This is an assembly recipe: two frozen mixtures from elsewhere in the book, layered in a shallow tin and cut into twelve portions. Almost everything that can go wrong is a matter of the mold and the freezing, not the flavors.

The hinge: fill only to a quarter inch below the topThe vanilla layer must be frozen firm and slightly recessed before the strawberry water ice goes on, or the two bleed together and the finished slab will not cut cleanly. Smooth the second layer flush and give it its own hour to set hard.
The moldAn 8 x 5-3/4 x 1-3/4 inch tin with a tight outer-fitting lid holds roughly 1-1/3 quarts filled to the brim. A small metal baking pan of similar dimensions works if you cover it tightly; the point is a straight-sided block that unmolds in one piece.
Butter as a gasketSoftened butter smeared along the seam between box and lid keeps the salt brine out. This mattered when the mold sat buried in a tub of ice and salt; in a freezer it is unnecessary, and plastic wrap pressed to the surface plus foil does the same job of keeping air off.
Salted iceCrushed ice mixed with coarse salt in roughly three parts ice to one part salt drops the bath well below freezing. The warning that the water must not rise above the bottom of the box is a warning against brine seeping in under the lid. A domestic freezer at 0F replaces the whole arrangement; allow longer than the stated times, since a brine bath chills faster than still air.
Vanilla biscuit preparationNo. 3438 is the book's vanilla biscuit preparation; biscuit glace bases of this type are generally a whipped egg-and-syrup mixture lightened with cream, which stays sliceable without churning. A modern semifreddo or parfait base of the same kind will behave correctly here; ordinary churned ice cream will not layer as neatly and sets harder.
Cardboard casesTwelve stiff paper cases half an inch deep, laid to tile the base of the tin exactly, become the bottom third of each finished portion and give a rim to handle. Small rectangular paper baking cases or cut parchment collars serve the same purpose; without them, cut the slab and set each piece on a paper doily as directed.
Unmolding and cuttingA brief dip of the base in hot water, no more than a few seconds, and a thin knife run around the inside. Wipe the blade between cuts and work quickly; a slab this thin softens fast. Warm the knife in hot water for clean edges.
YieldTwelve portions, each roughly 2 x 1-7/8 inches and 1-3/4 inches tall including the case. This is a small formal ice served at the end of a long menu, not a bowl of ice cream.

A Little History

Biscuit glace is generally said to take its name not from a cookie but from the shape and the service: the frozen mixture was molded in a shallow block, cut into small bricks, and set into paper cases so it could be handed round like a petit four. Charles Ranhofer, chef at Delmonico's in New York, gathered dozens of these in The Epicurean (1894), each distinguished only by its flavor pairing and its dedication, which is how a two-layer vanilla-and-strawberry ice comes to be styled a la d'Orleans, presumably after the French royal house, in the same spirit as the Excelsior biscuit immediately preceding it. The elaborate business with tin boxes, buttered seams and tubs of salted ice is a reminder that this is pre-mechanical freezing: everything depended on a brine bath and a cook willing to watch it for two and a half hours.