No. 3487

Banana Pudding

Pouding aux Bananes

The composition for this is one pint of banana pulp, one pint of thirty-five degree syrup and a gill of lemon juice; bring this to twenty-two degrees test, then pass it through a sieve and freeze, incorporating two Italian meringue egg-whites (No. 140). Coat a two-quart pudding mold with vanilla ice cream (No. 3458); on the bottom place a layer of the banana ice, on this some slices of banana macerated for one hour in maraschino, and bestrewn with finely powdered sugar, also some biscuits soaked in Curacoa, then another layer of banana ice, more sliced bananas and more biscuits, proceeding until the mold is thoroughly filled; freeze in salted ice for one hour and a half. Invert the pudding on a folded napkin and serve at the same time a sauce composed of whipped cream, vanilla ice cream and kirsch, the whole well mixed.

← No. 3486 Plombiere with Chestnuts Ices & Ice Creams No. 3488 Biscuit Pudding →

For the Modern Kitchen

Ranhofer assumes a professional ice room: a saccharometer, a pail of salted ice, and a cook who already knows what a 35-degree syrup is. The dish itself is a bombe — an ice cream shell filled with alternating layers — and it is entirely reproducible with a domestic churn and a freezer.

The degrees are Baumé, not temperatureA "thirty-five degree syrup" is heavy stock syrup, roughly 65 percent sugar by weight — about 2 lb sugar dissolved in 1 pint water. Bringing the finished mixture to "twenty-two degrees test" means diluting or adjusting until it reads 22° Baumé on a syrup hydrometer, near 40° Brix on a refractometer. Without either instrument, aim for a base that tastes distinctly sweeter than you want the frozen result to be, since freezing mutes sugar.
A gillHalf a cup, 4 fl oz. That is a lot of lemon juice against a pint of pulp, and it is deliberate: acid keeps banana from tasting flat and slows browning.
Italian meringue, measured oddly"Two Italian meringue egg-whites" means the meringue made from two whites — whites whipped while hot sugar syrup is poured in (Ranhofer gives his own degree at No. 140). Fold it into the ice when it is half frozen; it lightens the texture and keeps the banana ice from setting hard as a brick.
Banana pulpA pint is roughly 4 to 5 very ripe bananas, sieved. Taste the pulp before you fix the syrup ratio; ripeness varies a great deal.
"Biscuits"Not American biscuits and not cookies in the crisp sense — most likely biscuits à la cuiller, ladyfingers. Soak them briefly in curaçao; a long soak collapses them into paste.
Lining the moldChill the mold hard, then press slightly softened vanilla ice cream against the walls in an even half-inch layer with the back of a cold spoon, and refreeze the shell solid before filling. Working from a warm mold is the usual cause of a bombe that slumps on unmolding.
Freezing in salted iceAn hour and a half packed in ice and rock salt equals four to six hours in a home freezer, ideally overnight. To unmold, dip the mold in warm water for a few seconds and invert; the folded napkin on the platter catches meltwater.
The sauceWhipped cream, vanilla ice cream and kirsch mixed together makes a loose, cold pouring sauce. Mix it just before service — it separates as the ice cream melts out.
YieldA two-quart mold serves 10 to 12 as it is very rich.

A Little History

Charles Ranhofer ran the kitchens at Delmonico's in New York for over thirty years, and The Epicurean (1894) is essentially that restaurant's working manual, cross-referenced by number so a cook could chase a component recipe down without repeating it. Bananas were still something of a luxury novelty in American cities in the 1880s and 90s, arriving by steamer from Central America and the Caribbean in quantities that had only recently made them affordable, and their appearance in a formal iced bombe marks them as a fashionable ingredient rather than a homely one. The construction is standard high French practice of the period: a bombe or iced pudding built in a lined mold, frozen in a pail of salted ice, turned out on a napkin to soak up the drip, and sent to the table with a separate sauce.