No. 3468

Fiori Di Latte a la Orlandini

Fiori di Latte a la Orlandini

Whip a pint of cream, then drain on a sieve; grate the peel of a good orange on lump sugar, and scrape off the part impregnated with the peel. Make an Italian meringue preparation with five eggs (No. 140), add the sugar flavored with the peel to the sugar used for making the meringue; leave stand till cold, then incorporate gently the whipped cream without beating, and add candied citron peel cut up finely, and a little powdered vanilla. Fill a fiori di latte mold (Fig. 628), with a coating of chocolate a quarter of an inch thick, pour in the preparation, and finish the same as a la Bellini (No. 3467).

← No. 3467 Fiori Di Latte a la Bellini Ices & Ice Creams No. 3469 Fiori Di Latte with Vanilla or Other Flavori →

For the Modern Kitchen

This is a moulded semifreddo rather than a churned ice: the Italian meringue and whipped cream carry enough air that it freezes soft without a machine. The chocolate shell is the fussy part and should be done first.

The hinge: fold, never beatRanhofer says to incorporate the whipped cream "without beating" for good reason. Once the meringue is fully cold, fold the cream in with a spatula in three additions; knocking the air out gives a dense, icy block instead of a fiori di latte.
Italian meringue (No. 140)Ranhofer says "five eggs"; for an Italian meringue this means the whites. Whip them, then pour in hot sugar syrup as a thread while beating. No. 140 is not reproduced here, so the syrup stage given in modern practice (around 240F/115C, soft ball) is a reconstruction rather than Ranhofer's own figure. Beat until the bowl is cool to the touch before it meets the cream. The hot syrup warms the whites but does not reliably pasteurise them.
Sugar quantityThe original gives none, because No. 140 supplied it. A workable Italian meringue for five whites uses roughly 1 to 1 1/4 cups (200-250g) sugar with about 1/3 cup water; Ranhofer says only that the orange-scented sugar is added to the sugar used for the meringue, and does not say whether it counts within that total or on top of it.
Grating peel on lump sugarAn oleo-saccharum by another name: rubbing a sugar cube over the fruit tears the peel's oil cells and traps the oil in the sugar. Scrape off the coloured, damp sugar and discard the cube's dry core. Zesting one orange straight into the syrup sugar and letting it sit 20 minutes achieves the same thing.
A pint of cream, drainedTwo US cups of heavy cream, whipped to soft peaks and left on a fine sieve to shed the loose liquid so it does not water the mixture. Do not whip to stiff peaks; it will turn grainy when folded.
Powdered vanillaIn this period the term generally meant dried vanilla bean ground fine, often with sugar. Use the scraped seeds of half a bean, or half a teaspoon of extract added to the cream before whipping.
The chocolate-lined mouldChill the mould hard, brush in tempered dark chocolate, chill, and repeat until you have a shell about 1/4 inch thick. Untempered chocolate is liable to bloom and crack when the mould is turned out, though it will still taste right.
Freezing without ice and saltThe finishing is referred to No. 3467, not spelled out here; moulded ices of this period were set by packing the sealed mould in cracked ice and rock salt for several hours. A domestic freezer at 0F does the job in four to six hours, or overnight. Dip the mould briefly in warm water to release, and let the dessert stand five to ten minutes before serving.
YieldA pint of cream plus five whites makes roughly 1 1/2 quarts of frozen mixture, enough for eight to ten portions.

A Little History

Fiori di latte "flowers of milk" is the name Ranhofer himself uses for a run of moulded cream ices, and Charles Ranhofer gives a run of them in The Epicurean (1894), the enormous compendium of his thirty-odd years as chef at Delmonico's in New York. The neighbouring numbers carry the same operatic ring, No. 3467 being "a la Bellini," and Delmonico's habit of naming ices and bombes after composers, singers and regular patrons means an attribution like Orlandini may commemorate a customer, a performer or a colleague; Ranhofer rarely explained. What the recipe does document precisely is the technique of the period: an Italian meringue for stability, drained whipped cream for lightness, candied citron for texture, and a chocolate-lined mould packed in ice and rock salt, which is how frozen desserts were set before mechanical refrigeration reached the restaurant kitchen.