No. 3441

Printanier Fruit Bomb

Bombe aux Fruits Printaniere

Pack a bomb mold (Fig. 627) in salted ice and cover the bottom and sides with a layer of strawberry ice cream (No. 3451), having it a quarter of an inch thick; fill in the hollow with a preparation made as follows: In a tin basin have fourteen egg yolks, six gills of twenty-degree syrup, and a vanilla bean split lengthwise in two; mingle well, and set the basin on a slow fire; cook until the composition covers the spoon or spatula, then remove, strain, return it to the clean basin and set it on ice; beat thoroughly to have it light, adding one quart of firm whipped cream, drained for two hours on a sieve; mix well together and pour this preparation into the mold, filling it entirely; place over a sheet of paper and the cover; pack in salted ice, and allow one hour's freezing for each quart of cream. After the bomb is properly frozen unmold on an ice-cold dish and garnish around with a macedoine of fruits steeped in maraschino.

← No. 3440 Bomb a la Trobriand and Fifth Avenue Ices & Ice Creams No. 3442 Roman Bomb →

For the Modern Kitchen

A two-part frozen bombe: a shell of strawberry ice cream lining the mold, a vanilla bombe mixture (a cooked yolk-and-syrup base lightened with whipped cream) filling the center. Nothing here is difficult, but the syrup density and the packing are where it succeeds or fails.

Twenty-degree syrupRanhofer measured sugar syrup with a saccharometer on the Baume scale; 20 degrees is roughly 36 percent sugar by weight. About 2 1/2 cups of sugar dissolved in 1 quart of water, boiled briefly and cooled, lands close to it. Get this wrong on the sweet side and the bombe will not freeze firm.
Six gillsA gill is half a cup, so six gills is three cups. Fourteen yolks to three cups of syrup is a very rich base by modern standards and yields a dense, slow-melting center.
Cooking the base"Until the composition covers the spoon" means a nappe custard, 175-180F on a thermometer. Past 185F the yolks scramble and no amount of straining recovers the texture; the strain step afterward is insurance, not a rescue.
Draining the creamWhipping the cream and letting it drain two hours on a sieve removes free liquid, which is what forms ice crystals. Do not skip it, and fold rather than stir it into the chilled base.
Salted iceThree parts crushed ice to one part rock salt by volume brings the packing well below freezing. Drain and replenish as it melts, and keep the mold's seam above the brine line so salt water cannot creep in.
The moldA traditional bomb mold is a spherical or bullet-shaped tinned copper form with a lid. A metal pudding basin or a rounded stainless bowl covered with parchment and foil works; the sheet of paper under the cover keeps salt water and metal taste off the surface.
Freezing timeOne hour per quart in salted ice is the original figure. In a modern freezer at 0F, expect four to six hours for a full mold, and let it stand a few minutes before unmolding rather than dipping it in warm water, which melts the strawberry shell first.
Yield and garnishThe filling alone comes to something over two quarts once the beaten custard and the quart of whipped cream are combined, so the mold needs to be at least that size before the ice-cream shell is allowed for; figure twelve to sixteen in thin wedges. The macedoine is simply mixed diced fruit; a couple of tablespoons of maraschino over 3 cups of fruit, macerated an hour, is enough.

A Little History

This comes from Charles Ranhofer's The Epicurean (1894), the enormous compendium he wrote after nearly three decades as chef at Delmonico's in New York, and the ice chapters in it are among the fullest records of nineteenth-century American restaurant confectionery. A bombe glacee is conventionally said to take its name from the bombshell shape of the early molds, and the form was built to be carried whole to the table and sliced so the shell and center showed as concentric rings. Printaniere means "of springtime" and points at the strawberries and the fresh fruit macedoine, which in Ranhofer's kitchen signaled the season as clearly as any menu heading. The construction depended entirely on ice and rock salt, delivered in blocks from commercial icehouses, and the yolk-heavy center was not only for richness: sugar lowers the freezing point, while fat and egg yolk interfere with ice-crystal growth, and together they keep a molded ice sliceable rather than shattering, a fact confectioners worked out by trial long before anyone wrote it down as chemistry.