Important: Safety Warning

This page instructs infusing crushed cherry pits into a dessert. Cherry pits contain amygdalin, which releases hydrogen cyanide; the quantity is not controlled in any way here, and scaling the recipe up increases the risk.

This information has been left in for historical purposes but should not be acted upon.

No. 3485

Plombiere with Cherries

Plombiere aux Cerises

Suppress the stalks and pips from one pound of cherries; pound and press through a sieve; into this pulp mix five gills of cold thirty-degree syrup, a few bits of lemon peel and some lemon juice; pass the preparation once more, then stir in an infusion made with a part of the crushed cherry pips and some light syrup. Bring it to twenty-two degree syrup, then freeze the whole, the same as an ordinary ice. After it becomes firm and smooth incorporate a few spoonfuls of kirsch; ten minutes later transfer three or four spoonfuls to a vessel and mix in with it six or seven gills of well-whipped rich cream, properly drained and sweetened; stir this at once into the principal preparation, but only a little at a time, to have the mixture more perfect. Beat the whole well for a few moments longer so that it attains body. Coat a plombiere mold with kirsch ice cream (No. 3462), fill it full with the above, close properly and freeze. Unmold on a napkin and decorate the summit of the cupola with candied cherries that have been softened in light syrup and macerated in kirsch for one hour previously, and then well drained.

← No. 3484 Plombiere, Havanese Style Ices & Ice Creams No. 3486 Plombiere with Chestnuts →

For the Modern Kitchen Do not make this as written.

This is a cherry water ice lightened with whipped cream and lined with kirsch ice cream — a showpiece from the Delmonico's kitchen. One step in it is a genuine poisoning hazard, and it is not a step that can be corrected by eye.

The cherry-pip infusion is the problemCherry kernels contain amygdalin, which releases hydrogen cyanide when the kernel is crushed and brought into contact with water. Crushing the pips and steeping them in syrup is precisely the procedure that liberates it, and here the infusion goes straight into a cold, uncooked base.
No measured quantity, no safe margin"A part of the crushed cherry pips" from a pound of cherries gives the cook nothing to work from. Kernel toxicity varies with variety, ripeness and how finely the pit is broken, so there is no way to judge the dose from the text. Modern recipes generally reach for kirsch or a commercial noyau flavouring instead.
Freezing does not helpThe recipe never says whether the pips are steeped hot or cold, so no cooking step can be assumed; and freezing preserves rather than removes anything the infusion carries. The finished plombiere is served cold.
Reading the syrup degreesThe "thirty-degree" and "twenty-two-degree" figures are conventionally read as Baume, giving roughly 56 percent and 40 percent sugar by weight. The recipe itself names no instrument, but the method assumes a heavy stock syrup let down to freezing strength.
GillsA gill is half a cup, so five gills of syrup is two and a half cups and six or seven gills of whipped cream is three to three and a half cups measured after whipping and draining.
If you want the dishUse a current cherry ice or bombe recipe. The cream, kirsch and candied-cherry finish are all sound; only the kernel infusion needs to go, and it should not be reconstructed by guesswork.

A Little History

Plombière is the old name for a moulded frozen cream, generally traced — the connection is traditional rather than documented — to Plombières-les-Bains in the Vosges. By the time Charles Ranhofer set down The Epicurean in 1894 from his years as chef at Delmonico's in New York, a plombière meant a specific piece of technique: a mould lined with one ice cream and filled with a second, richer mixture, frozen hard, then turned out on a folded napkin as a cupola. The cherry-pip infusion belongs to the nineteenth-century taste for noyau, the bitter-almond note drawn from the kernels of stone fruit, which cooks of the period used freely in ices, ratafias and custards; kirsch, distilled from whole cherries including their pits, carries a trace of the same flavour and is what survives of the practice today. The Baumé readings scattered through this chapter are a reminder that a large hotel pastry department worked to instrument measurements, not cups, and kept stock syrup on hand to be let down to whatever density the dish required.