No. 3457

Rice Ice Cream with Citron, Garnished with Truffles

Creme de Riz et au Cedrat, Garnie de Truffes

Place eight egg-whites in a tinned basin with twelve ounces of sugar and four tablespoonfuls of rice flour; stir well together, adding a quart of boiling milk; cook without boiling on a slow fire, remove and when cold put in a pint of cream; pass through a sieve, freeze and then add half a pound of very finely shredded citron peel and half a pint of blanched rice cooked in syrup. Have it molded in a low Madeleine mold, and garnish around with imitation truffles prepared as follows:

Truffle Ice Cream.—This cream can only be made with fresh truffles. Brush over half a pound of fresh, fragrant truffles; peel, slice and infuse in a pint of boiling cream for thirty minutes. Drop twelve egg-yolks in a tinned basin with ten ounces of sugar; mix well together and then add one quart of cream, including that in which the truffles are being infused; cook the preparation without boiling, and add the truffles after pounding and passing them through a sieve. Freeze and mold in molds imitating whole truffles coated with chocolate; pack in ice. Chop up the truffle peelings very finely, mixing in a few vanilla seeds; dry in the open air, pass through a sieve and roll the unmolded imitation truffles in this powder. Use these truffles to decorate the above ice cream.

← No. 3456 Rice Ice Cream, Paradise Ices & Ice Creams No. 3458 Vanilla Ice Creams—Italian Meringue →

For the Modern Kitchen

Two frozen preparations in one entry: a rice-flour ice cream stiffened with candied citron and syrup-cooked rice, and a truffle custard ice cream molded into fake truffles to ring the base. Both are cooked custards, so the hinge is temperature control.

Cook without boilingBoth bases are cooked without letting the milk or cream boil. The yolk-based truffle cream is ready when it coats a spoon, around 170-180F, and should come off the heat as it thickens; much hotter and the eggs are likely to curdle. The first base is thickened with whites and rice flour rather than yolks, so it will not behave the same way.
A tinned basinThis means a tin-lined copper bowl set over gentle heat or hot water. A stainless bowl over simmering water, or a heavy saucepan on low with constant stirring, does the same job.
Egg whites in the rice baseThe first cream is unusual in using eight whites rather than yolks; the rice flour supplies the body a yolk custard would get from fat. Substituting yolks while keeping the rice flour would likely give a heavier, pastier result.
Rice flour, not ground riceFour tablespoonfuls means the fine white starch sold as rice flour, roughly 1 oz. Coarse ground rice will read as sandy in a frozen cream.
Blanched rice cooked in syrupSimmer the rice in water until just tender, drain, then finish it in a light sugar syrup and cool. The sugar helps keep the grains from freezing into hard pellets; rice cooked in water alone tends to freeze hard.
Citron peelCandied citron, the thick-rinded Citrus medica, sold in tubs near baking supplies at holidays. Shred it very fine and toss it with a spoonful of the syrup so it stays soft when frozen.
FreezingWritten for a hand-cranked pail packed with ice and coarse salt. A modern machine churns it, after which it needs firming in the freezer before it will take a mold cleanly.
Madeleine moldMost likely a low, plain round mold rather than the shell-shaped tin associated with the little cakes, though the book does not describe it. Any straight-sided low form will do; pack the frozen cream in hard and freeze several hours before unmolding.
Fresh truffles onlyThe instruction is not decorative. Truffle aroma is volatile and is best captured by infusing the slices in hot cream, as here; jarred or oiled truffle products tend to give a synthetic note that dominates a sweet custard. Half a pound of fresh truffles makes this an extravagant garnish.
YieldThe rice cream runs to roughly three quarts once the rice and citron go in, and the truffle cream to about a quart and a half.

A Little History

Charles Ranhofer wrote The Epicurean (1894) out of thirty-odd years at Delmonico's in New York, and this entry is a good example of what that kitchen was for: not a dish anyone needed, but a demonstration. The rice cream itself belongs to an older European family of crèmes de riz, where rice or rice flour gives a frozen sweet body and chew at a time when stabilizers meant starch, eggs or nothing. What sits on top is pure trompe-l'œil, the confectioner's habit of making one food impersonate another: a savory truffle custard, chilled, molded into truffle shapes, coated in chocolate and dusted with sifted truffle peel so that the imitation is made of the thing it imitates. Truffle in a sweet preparation was rare even in grand kitchens, a practice confined to houses that could afford to pound half a pound of them into cream.