No. 3444

Bomb Streaked with White and Black Coffee

Bombe Panachee au Cafe Blanc et Noir

White Coffee.—Set into a high saucepan three gills of thirty-two degree syrup and three and a half gills of water, adding six ounces of freshly roasted coffee; cover the saucepan tightly and leave the coffee infuse in the syrup for three hours in a bain-marie. Place fourteen egg-yolks in a basin, whip them gradually with the coffee infusion and cook on a slow fire; strain the preparation when done and beat it well on ice, mixing in half as much well-drained whipped cream.

Black Coffee.—Put fourteen egg-yolks in a tinned copper basin, dilute with three gills of thirty-two degree syrup and three gills of very strong coffee, made with two ounces of ground Java, Maracaibo and Mocha; finish it exactly the same as the white coffee.

Divide a bomb mold with a tin partition to separate it perpendicularly into two compartments; put the white coffee preparation in one, remove the tin and replace it with a waffle of the same size; finish filling the mold with the black coffee preparation, having the mold quite full. Cover with paper, then with the lid and pack well in ice; leave it to freeze, allowing an hour and a half for two quarts; remove from the ice, turn it out on a folded napkin and surround with small coffee lady bouchees (No. 3376), then serve.

← No. 3443 Bomb with Liquors Ices & Ice Creams No. 3445 Ice Cream a la Cialdini →

For the Modern Kitchen

Ranhofer assumes a professional pastry kitchen: syrup measured by hydrometer, a copper basin, and a bombe mold packed in a pail of ice and salt. The quantities are for two quarts and scale down cleanly by half.

GillsA gill is half a cup. Three gills is 1½ cups; three and a half gills is 1¾ cups.
Thirty-two degree syrupThat is 32° on the Baumé scale, the standard pastry syrup of the period — roughly 3 parts sugar to 2 parts water by weight, boiled until dissolved and cooled. If you have no hydrometer, dissolve 2 cups sugar in 1 cup water and bring just to a boil.
The two coffees"White" coffee is not a milk drink: six ounces of whole freshly roasted beans steep in warm syrup, which takes flavor and aroma but little color. "Black" is ordinary very strong brewed coffee. The contrast in the finished bombe is as much about depth of flavor as shade.
Bain-marie infusionThree hours covered over a bain-marie means gentle heat, well short of a boil. Boiled syrup will drive off the aromatics that are the whole point of the white side.
Cooking the yolks"Cook on a slow fire" means to a custard, around 180F on a thermometer, stirring constantly — the mixture should coat a spoon and no more. Fourteen yolks in about three cups of liquid sets fast, so pull it early and strain immediately as directed.
Tinned copperUse stainless steel. Bare or worn tinned copper reacts with acidic and egg-rich mixtures; modern stainless does the same job.
The waffleA gaufre — a thin crisp wafer cut to the shape of the partition, standing between the two mixtures so they do not bleed into each other. A sheet of feuille de bricks or a wafer-thin tuile cut to size will do.
FreezingAn hour and a half packed in ice and salt is churn-free still-freezing, and it works because the base is heavy with yolk and whipped cream. In a home freezer the result will be coarser; freeze each mixture to a thick soft-serve stage in an ice cream machine first, then fill the mold and firm it up for several hours.
YieldTwo quarts, served at a Delmonico's table alongside the little coffee bouchées. Unmold onto a folded napkin, which absorbs the melt and keeps the bombe from sliding.

A Little History

The Epicurean (1894) is Charles Ranhofer's record of thirty-odd years as chef at Delmonico's in New York, and its ices section is one of the most elaborate in the book: dozens of numbered bombes, each a molded composite meant to be turned out whole at table. Bombe is generally traced to the spherical, cannonball-like molds used when the form emerged in nineteenth-century France; by Ranhofer's day the molds were more often tall and domed, but the name stuck. Panachée means variegated or plumed — striped, streaked, parti-colored — and describes a bombe built in visible sections. The three coffees named here, Java, Maracaibo and Mocha, were familiar fine-coffee names on the late nineteenth-century American table, and the call for freshly roasted coffee for the infusion reflects a kitchen that roasted and ground its own.