No. 3448

Columbia Ice Cream

Creme a la Columbia

To make this ice cream it will require two preparations: One composed of a pint of fresh cream, half a gill of maraschino and four ounces of sugar; strain through a sieve, freeze, then add another half gill of maraschino, a little at a time, one Italian meringue egg-white (No. 140), half an ounce of cherries cut in four, half an ounce of candied citron and orange peel chopped into thin shreds. The other preparation is made as follows: Grind one pound of freshly peeled pistachios with a quarter of a pound of sugar, diluting with a quart of cream. Put into a vessel twelve egg-yolks and eight ounces of sugar; mix well together, add the pistachios and a coloring of spinach green to give it a pale green hue. Set the basin on a slow fire and cook the cream without boiling, stirring continuously, and when it covers the spatula cool and put in three-quarters of a gill of orange flower water. Strain through a sieve, freeze, then mix in as much whipped cream (No. 50), two ounces of candied pineapple cut in quarter-inch squares and two ounces of angelica cut the same. Fill a Madeleine mold (Fig. 694) quite full of the two preparations divided in halves; fasten the lid on tightly, pack in salted ice and an hour after unmold on a very cold dish and bestrew with finely minced green pistachios.

← No. 3447 Caramel Ice Cream Ices & Ice Creams No. 3449 Chocolate and Cocoa Ice Cream →

For the Modern Kitchen

Ranhofer is describing a two-flavor bombe: a maraschino cream and a pistachio custard, packed together in a mold and frozen in salted ice. Nothing here is difficult, but the measurements and the molding need translating.

GillsA gill is 4 fl oz, half a cup. So half a gill is 2 fl oz (1/4 cup) of maraschino in each addition, and three-quarters of a gill is 3 fl oz of orange flower water. That is a great deal of orange flower water by modern taste; a tablespoon or two is closer to what most palates now accept.
MaraschinoThis is the clear Dalmatian cherry liqueur (Luxardo and Maraska are the surviving makers), not the syrup from a jar of bright red cocktail cherries. The 4 fl oz total going into one pint of cream is a heavy dose of alcohol, which depresses the freezing point — that half will stay noticeably softer and slower to set than the custard half.
The custard is the hinge"Cook the cream without boiling... when it covers the spatula" means a stirred custard taken to the nappe stage, about 175–180F. Twelve yolks in a quart of cream will curdle fast above that. Use a thermometer, keep the heat low, and strain as directed.
Spinach greenThe Epicurean's green coloring is spinach leaves pounded, pressed and the juice gently heated so the chlorophyll coagulates and can be lifted off. A few drops of green food coloring does the same job; the pistachios themselves give little color once cream and yolks are in.
PistachiosA pound of shelled nuts, blanched in boiling water and rubbed out of their skins while warm — that is what "freshly peeled" means, and it is what keeps the color clean. Grinding them with the sugar prevents the mass turning to paste.
Madeleine moldNot the shell-shaped tin. In Ranhofer this appears to be a lidded mold of the family used for bombes and puddings rather than a baking tin. Any lidded metal mold or loaf pan sealed tightly with foil will serve.
Freezing and packingChurn each mixture separately, pack the two halves into the chilled mold, and freeze. An hour buried in ice and coarse salt gives a hard set; an ordinary home freezer needs four hours or more, and the maraschino half longer still. Unmold by wiping the outside with a hot cloth.
YieldThe two preparations are very unequal in bulk: a pint of cream on the maraschino side against a quart plus whipped cream on the pistachio side. Since the mold is filled with the two "divided in halves," the pistachio batch makes far more than the mold needs; halving it is reasonable for a domestic kitchen.

A Little History

Charles Ranhofer ran the kitchens at Delmonico's in New York for over thirty years, and The Epicurean (1894) is his catalogue of what a great American restaurant could put on a plate. Molded two-tone ice creams of this kind sat at the summit of the dessert course: they demanded an ice house, a mold, and a pastry cook with time. The name is generally taken to invoke Columbia as the figure of the United States, a common flourish in the years around the 1893 World's Columbian Exposition, and the dish is characteristic of Ranhofer's habit of naming ices for places, patrons and occasions rather than for what is in them. The ingredient list is a fair inventory of a nineteenth-century confectioner's store cupboard — maraschino, candied citron, angelica stems, candied pineapple, orange flower water — most of which have retreated to specialist suppliers since.