No. 3469

Fiori Di Latte with Vanilla or Other Flavorings

Fiori di Latte a la Vanille ou Autres Parfums

Beat up a pint of whipped cream; drain on a sieve. Whip five egg-whites quite stiff; cook eight ounces of sugar with half a vanilla bean to thirty-five degrees; suppress the vanilla and mix the sugar with the egg-whites, a little at a time, while stirring the meringue constantly; leave to cool on ice. Coat a fiori di latte mold with pistachio ice cream (No. 3454); pack in ice (have the coating only a quarter-inch thick); fill the center of this shell quite full, pressing down the preparation with the cover and imbed in ice, allowing one hour's freezing for each quart. Unmold on a folded napkin and serve. This ice may be prepared and finished the same way, only putting in the eighth part of a vanilla stick instead of half a one, and after the preparation is quite firm adding either maraschino, kirsch, prunelle, Curacoa, almond milk, or concentrated orange flower water, just enough to have the preparation nicely flavored.

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For the Modern Kitchen

This is a frozen Italian meringue folded with whipped cream, cased in a thin shell of pistachio ice cream. Ranhofer assumes a saccharometer, a salt-and-ice cave, and a hinged mold, all of which need translating.

"Thirty-five degrees" is Baumé, not Fahrenheit"Thirty-five degrees" is a saccharometer reading in degrees Baumé, not Fahrenheit — Ranhofer measured syrup density with a Baumé saccharometer. About 35° B is a heavy syrup of roughly 65 percent sugar; on a candy thermometer that falls in the region of 215–220°F, though the two scales do not correspond exactly. A Fahrenheit reading of 35 is meaningless here.
A pint of cream, measured before whippingA pint of cream — 'a pint of whipped cream' is ambiguous, and may mean a pint measured before beating or a pint of the beaten product; either reading is defensible. Whip to soft peaks and drain on a sieve so the loose liquid does not water the mixture.
The meringue must be cold before it meets the creamHot syrup beaten into the whites gives an Italian meringue that stays glossy and stable; if it is folded into the cream while still warm it deflates the cream and the frozen result turns dense and icy. Beat until the bowl is cool, then chill it further before combining.
Raw egg whitesThe hot syrup warms the whites but does not reliably pasteurise them, and nothing here is cooked afterwards. Use pasteurised whites if serving anyone elderly, pregnant, very young, or immune-compromised.
The mold and the shellA fiori di latte mold is a lidded mold; the recipe's 'cover' confirms it closes over the filling. Chill it hard, then spread the pistachio ice cream in a quarter-inch layer up the sides with a cold spoon and refreeze that shell solid before filling; a soft shell will slump and marble into the centre.
Freezing without a salt cave"Pack in ice" means a bucket of crushed ice and rock salt, which sits well below 32°F. A home freezer at 0°F does the same work more slowly: allow four to six hours for a quart mold rather than Ranhofer's one hour, and press the lid down firmly to expel air pockets.
The liqueur variantsAlcohol lowers the freezing point, so the maraschino, kirsch, prunelle or curaçao is added only after the base is firm, and sparingly — a tablespoon or two per quart. "Almond milk" here is the period preparation of ground almonds steeped in water (close kin to orgeat), not the modern carton drink; concentrated orange flower water is potent and wants a scant teaspoon.
Yield and servingThe quantities make a sizeable molded ice, enough for eight or so, though the recipe specifies no mold size. Dip the mold briefly in cool water to release it, turn it out onto a folded napkin on a cold plate, and serve at once.

A Little History

Fiori di latte — literally rendered "flowers of milk," though the Italian ordinarily denotes the cream or best of the milk — was the nineteenth-century confectioner's name for a frozen cream preparation lightened with meringue rather than set with a custard, and the Italian phrasing points to the Italian and Swiss confectioners who worked in the ice trade in Paris, London and New York through the 1800s. Charles Ranhofer, chef at Delmonico's for over thirty years, gathered dozens of these molded ices into The Epicurean (1894), where numbered variants run in sequence — Orlandini, violets and burnt almonds, and this vanilla version — each distinguished largely by its casing and its flavoring liqueur. The elaborate shell-and-center construction reflects a kitchen with a dedicated ice room and a cellar of molds; the ices were meant to arrive at table as sculpture, unmolded onto a napkin.