No. 3443

Bomb with Liquors

Bombe aux Liqueurs

Have twelve raw egg-yolks well beaten in a saucepan, or tinned copper basin, with four gills of thirty-two degree syrup, four gills of water and one gill of either aniseed, Curacoa, kirsch, maraschino or mint liquors. Cook the preparation over a very slow fire; stir continuously until it covers the spatula well, then remove and pass it through a fine sieve. Wash the basin, put back the preparation and whip until firm and light, then add the same quantity of very solid whipped cream (No. 50) drained well for two hours on a hair sieve; mix together. Imbed the mold in ice, fill the inside with orange water ice if for aniseed, strawberry water ice for Curacoa, vanilla for kirsch, pistachio for maraschino, and lemon water ice for mint. When the mold is overflowing lay on a sheet of waxed paper twice the diameter of the mold. Put on the lid, fastening it down firmly, and cover with a thick bed of salted ice; freeze for one hour and a half for two quarts. Take out the mold, dip it quickly in hot water and invert on a folded napkin; surround with a garnishing either of macaroons, small biscuit cases, small flat waffles, small cream cakes or slices of Savoy biscuit iced with prunelle.

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For the Modern Kitchen

Ranhofer's bombe is a cooked yolk-and-syrup base (what a modern kitchen calls pâte à bombe) lightened with whipped cream and packed around a water-ice center. The technique is sound; only the units, the vessels and the freezing method need translating.

The hinge: cook the custard, then chill it before the cream goes inThe hinge: cook the custard, then whip it cold before the cream goes in — the recipe says only to stir without stopping over a very slow fire until it coats the spatula, which in modern terms means stopping short of a boil (a nappe custard thickens somewhere around 175–180F). It must not boil or it scrambles, and it should be whipped cold and thick before the cream is folded in, or the cream deflates and the bombe freezes dense.
GillsA gill is half a cup (US measure). Four gills of syrup and four gills of water are two cups each; one gill of liqueur is half a cup. Twelve yolks is roughly three-quarters to one cup.
Thirty-two degree syrupDegrees Baumé, read with a saccharometer. Thirty-two degrees is about 59 percent sugar by weight, so roughly 3 parts sugar to 2 parts water by weight, brought to a boil and cooled. It is considerably heavier than equal-weights simple syrup.
Curacoa, prunelle, Savoy biscuitCuracoa is curaçao; prunelle is a sloe liqueur; Savoy biscuit is a dry sponge of the savoiardi type. Any of the five liqueurs works, but keep to the half cup — more alcohol and the bombe will not set firm.
VesselsThe tinned copper basin and hair sieve become a stainless bowl and a fine mesh strainer. Copper unlined by tin will discolor an egg mixture.
Freezing without a churnThe salted-ice bed is a brine at well below 32F; the waxed paper and tightly fastened lid exist to keep that brine out of the ice cream. A domestic freezer set to its coldest will do the same work, though the mold needs 4 to 6 hours rather than 90 minutes, and the seal still matters against freezer air.
UnmoldingA quick dip in hot water, not a long one — a few seconds is enough to release the shell, and any longer melts the outer layer into a slick.
YieldThe recipe times its freezing 'for two quarts', i.e. for a two-quart mold; the shell mixture as written makes rather more than that. Two quarts serves 12 to 16, with the biscuits or waffles arranged around the base.

A Little History

A bombe glacée takes its name from its mold: the early ones were spherical or ogival, the shape of a shell, and the form persisted long after the molds themselves grew conical and fluted. The construction here is standard high-nineteenth-century practice — a lining of one frozen mixture, a core of another chosen to contrast in color and flavor — and the cooked yolk base is the ancestor of the pâte à bombe still used in semifreddo and frozen soufflés, valued because the sugar and fat keep it soft at freezer temperature. Charles Ranhofer, chef at Delmonico's in New York and author of The Epicurean (1894), catalogued dozens of these bombes in sequence, each a permutation of shell, center and garnish, which tells you how much of a fashionable restaurant's reputation rested on the ice room. Making them at all required a steady supply of block ice and rock salt, and the elaborate garnishing of macaroons and iced sponge was the point: the bombe arrived at the table as architecture.