No. 3482

Plombiere a la Rochambeau

Pound half a pound of peeled almonds, but a few at a time, soaked for several hours in cold water, adding a little water at frequent intervals, then transfer from the mortar to a glazed vessel. Prepare an English cream (No. 42) with a quart of milk, half a pound of sugar, eight to ten egg yolks and a stick of vanilla split in two; as this becomes thick pour it over the almonds and stir occasionally while cooling, then strain forcibly through a tammy and leave till thoroughly cold. Pour this cream into a deep freezer imbedded in salted ice, work it vigorously until smooth and firm--this will take forty minutes--then incorporate two or three spoonfuls of kirsch mixed with a little orange syrup. Five to six minutes later stir in a pint of sweetened whipped cream, after adding to it a few spoonfuls of the almond preparation to prevent it from granulating; work again for ten to twelve minutes. Freeze a plombiere mold; coat it with nougat ice-cream (No. 3452) and at the bottom range some lady fingers soaked in prunelle; cover these with the above ice and on top of this place some preserved greengages, macerated for a quarter of an hour in kirsch and thick syrup, then drained. After the mold is full close the lid forcibly, pack it in salted ice and freeze for one hour for each quart. Unmold the plombiere on a folded napkin and surround the base with small iced Genoese cakes; fill the hollow center of the plombiere with some of the greengages infused in kirsch and serve separately, in a sauce tureen, whipped cream with a little kirsch added, mixing it well.

← No. 3481 Plombiere a la Richmond Ices & Ice Creams No. 3483 Plombiere d'Alencon →

For the Modern Kitchen

A bombe-style moulded ice built on almond custard, with a nougat ice-cream lining, liqueur-soaked ladyfingers and greengages. The work divides cleanly into three sessions: almond milk and custard one day, churning and moulding the next, and unmoulding on the day of service.

The hinge: the almonds are for flavour, not texturePounding blanched almonds wet, with water added a little at a time, draws out an almond milk rather than a paste; the hot custard is poured over it to extract more, and the whole is then forced through a tammy (a fine cloth strainer). A blender plus a nut-milk bag or several layers of muslin does the same job. Squeeze hard and discard the solids, or the ice will be gritty.
Custard temperatureA quart of milk, 8 oz sugar and eight to ten yolks, cooked as the English cream of No. 42 (not given here). In modern practice that means stirring over low heat until it coats a spoon, somewhere around 175-180F; let it get much hotter and it curdles, and no amount of straining recovers the texture.
"Deep freezer imbedded in salted ice"This is a hand-cranked pail churn packed with crushed ice and rock salt, not a modern freezer. Any domestic ice-cream machine replaces it; the forty minutes of "vigorous working" corresponds to churning until the mixture holds a soft-serve firmness.
Folding the whipped creamA pint of sweetened whipped cream goes into an already churned base, so slacken it first with a few spoonfuls of the almond preparation as directed. Cold cream dropped straight onto frozen custard seizes into little grains that never smooth out.
Alcohol lowers the freezing pointTwo or three spoonfuls of kirsch, plus the prunelle in the ladyfingers and the kirsch syrup on the fruit, will keep the finished plombière noticeably soft. Do not increase them, and give the packed mould the full hour per quart, or longer in a home freezer set to 0F.
Prunelle and greengagesPrunelle is a sloe liqueur; kirsch or a plum brandy stands in. Greengages are the small green-gold Reine Claude plums, sold fresh in late summer and preserved in syrup by French and Italian grocers; halved preserved plums or mirabelles work.
The mouldA plombière mould is a lidded metal dome, often with a tube forming the hollow centre that is later filled with fruit. A metal pudding basin or charlotte mould lined with cling film unmoulds well; without a central tube, simply hollow a well in the top after inverting.
YieldA quart of milk with sugar, yolks and almonds, plus a pint of whipped cream, makes a large ice, so allow a generous mould of two to three quarts once the nougat lining, cake and fruit are counted. Ranhofer's dessert is built for a formal dinner, not a family one.

A Little History

Plombières is a family of moulded ices thickened with egg yolks and almond milk, and often studded with candied fruit; the name is traditionally linked to the spa town of Plombières-les-Bains in the Vosges, though the connection is asserted more often than it is documented, and some nineteenth-century writers derive it instead from the lead-lined (plomb) moulds. Charles Ranhofer, chef of Delmonico's in New York, filled The Epicurean (1894) with dozens of them, each named for a person, place or patron in the manner of the Second Empire kitchen he trained in. Rochambeau commemorates the comte de Rochambeau, commander of the French expeditionary force at Yorktown, and such Franco-American dedications were useful currency in a New York restaurant selling French cooking to American money. The recipe also shows how much labour cold desserts demanded before mechanical refrigeration: almonds pounded by hand in a mortar, custard strained through cloth, and two separate freezings in ice and salt, all so that a dome of almond ice could reach the table intact.