No. 3445

Ice Cream a la Cialdini

Creme a la Cialdini

Put ten egg-yolks and eight ounces of sugar in a tinned copper basin; beat up well and add a pint of boiling milk into which has been infused, for half an hour, half a vanilla bean and two ounces of ground almonds. Cook the preparation on a slow fire until it covers the spatula, adding half a pound of dissolved chocolate, a piece of Ceylon cinnamon and a tablespoonful of ground coriander seeds; let cool, then pour in one pint of cream; pass the whole through a fine sieve, freeze and incorporate a quarter as much whipped cream (No. 50), half a pound of almonds and half a pound of quartered pistachios; pack the cream in ice and salt, and it is ready to use when needed.

← No. 3444 Bomb Streaked with White and Black Coffee Ices & Ice Creams No. 3446 Andalusian Ice Cream—Without Cooking →

For the Modern Kitchen

A cooked custard ice cream, heavily spiced and loaded with nuts — closer to an Italian semifreddo in richness than to a plain vanilla. The measurements are workable once you know what Ranhofer's vessels and verbs meant.

The hinge: cook the custard low"Cook on a slow fire until it covers the spatula" is the nappe stage — 180–185F, thick enough to coat the back of a spoon and hold a line drawn through it. Ten yolks to a pint of milk sets fast, so pull it off the heat early rather than late; above about 185F it will curdle.<br>
Tinned copper basinA round-bottomed copper bowl, lined with tin so the food would not sit against the bare copper. Any heavy-bottomed saucepan works, or a bowl over simmering water if you want insurance against scrambling.
"Dissolved chocolate"Melted, not cocoa dissolved in liquid. Half a pound is a substantial amount; use a dark eating chocolate around 55–65% and stir it into the hot custard so it emulsifies smoothly.
Ceylon cinnamonGenuine Cinnamomum verum, milder and more floral than the cassia sold as plain "cinnamon" in most American stores. A piece means a stick, infused and removed, not ground cinnamon stirred in.
CorianderA tablespoon of ground coriander seed in a frozen dessert reads oddly now, though it turns up in nineteenth-century confectionery spicing. Grind it fresh and consider starting with two teaspoons; stale pre-ground coriander tastes dusty.
Sieve first, nuts afterThe straining removes the cinnamon stick, the infused almond solids and any bits of set egg. The half pound of almonds and half pound of pistachios go in during churning, not before, or you will strain them out.
"A quarter as much whipped cream"A quarter of the volume of the frozen base, whipped to soft peaks and folded in once the mixture is partly frozen. It lightens the texture; in a modern machine, fold it in at the end of churning.
Freezing and packingThe original assumes a hand-cranked pail buried in crushed ice and coarse rock salt, which both freezes and then holds the cream. A domestic machine and then a few hours in the freezer at its coldest setting do the same job.
YieldTwo pints of dairy, ten yolks, half a pound of chocolate and a pound of nuts make roughly two quarts. It is very rich: figure sixteen small servings.

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 runs to well over a hundred numbered formulas — a measure of how much prestige a restaurant could win from a well-made frozen dessert before mechanical refrigeration was common. Naming dishes after public figures was routine in that kitchen, and Cialdini is often taken to refer to Enrico Cialdini (1811–1892), the Italian general and later ambassador who was a familiar name in the international press during the unification wars, though the identification is not documented. The combination of chocolate, almonds, pistachios, Ceylon cinnamon and coriander is itself Italian in feeling, echoing the spiced nut confectionery of the peninsula, though whether the general ever ate anything of the kind is not recorded. What the recipe does document plainly is the labour behind a Delmonico's ice: an infusion, a stirred custard, a straining, a churning and a packing in salt and ice, all before service.