No. 3488

Biscuit Pudding

Pouding aux Biscuits

Crumble one pound of very dry Savoy biscuit (No. 3231). Put twelve egg-yolks in a basin with six ounces of sugar; beat, add the crumbled biscuit and a quart of boiling milk; cook this on a slow fire without boiling, and when the preparation covers the spoon remove the basin from the fire, allow to cool, then strain through a sieve and freeze. Pack a two-quart pudding mold in salted ice; coat the inside with pistachio ice cream (No. 3454) and fill the center in alternate layers of the above ice, slices of biscuit soaked in maraschino, and a salpicon of fruits; continue until the mold is full, finishing the top with ice cream, then freeze for one hour for each quart. Unmold on a folded napkin and serve with a separate sauce made of vanilla ice cream beaten in a metal bowl, mixing in some rum and whipped cream.

← No. 3487 Banana Pudding Ices & Ice Creams No. 3489 Cavour Pudding →

For the Modern Kitchen

This is a moulded ice pudding — a bombe — built from a frozen custard, sponge biscuit and fruit, and it is written for a kitchen with an ice house rather than a freezer. The hinge is the custard: it must thicken to a coating consistency without ever simmering, or the twelve yolks will scramble and no amount of straining will save the texture.

Savoy biscuitA dry, sweet sponge biscuit; commercial ladyfingers (savoiardi) are the closest modern equivalent and will serve in both roles here. They must be genuinely dry and crisp so they absorb the hot milk and, later, the maraschino.
The custard temperature"Covers the spoon" means nappe — 175–180°F on a thermometer, where the custard coats the back of a spoon and holds a drawn line. Use a bowl over simmering water rather than direct heat; the original "basin" is a mixing bowl, not a saucepan.
Quantities in contextTwelve yolks and six ounces (a scant cup) of sugar to a quart of milk is an extremely rich custard by modern standards. It will freeze hard, which is exactly what a mould needs, but it will want a few minutes at room temperature before serving.
"Freeze" means churnRanhofer assumes a hand-cranked pot freezer. Churn the strained custard in an ice cream machine until it is thick but still soft enough to spread and layer — stiffer than soft-serve, looser than fully hardened.
Salpicon of fruitsA salpicon is simply fruit cut into small even dice, here candied or preserved fruit, often macerated in liqueur. Drain it well; excess syrup makes icy pockets in the finished pudding.
Packing the mould"Packed in salted ice" is the period method of holding a mould below 32°F: a bucket of crushed ice with coarse salt worked through it. A domestic freezer at 0°F does the same job; chill the mould thoroughly before lining it so the pistachio ice cream sets on contact.
Freezing time"One hour for each quart" applies to an ice-and-salt pack. In a home freezer a two-quart mould needs at least four to six hours, and overnight is safer. Unmould by dipping the outside briefly in warm water and inverting onto the chilled serving dish.
The sauceSoftened vanilla ice cream beaten smooth with rum and folded whipped cream. Make it at the last moment and keep the bowl cold, or it will separate.
YieldA two-quart bombe of this richness serves ten to twelve.

A Little History

The Epicurean (1894) is Charles Ranhofer's record of his years as chef at Delmonico's in New York, and its ice chapter reflects a period when a restaurant's standing rested partly on how elaborately it could freeze things. A pouding glacé like this one is a bombe in all but name: a decorative mould lined with one ice, filled with another, and studded with liqueur-soaked cake and candied fruit so that each slice shows a pattern. The maraschino comes from Dalmatian marasca cherries and was the fashionable soaking liqueur of the late nineteenth century, appearing throughout Ranhofer's book. The numbered cross-references — to Savoy biscuits, to pistachio ice cream — are a reminder that this was written for a brigade working from a single house repertoire, where a dish like this was assembled from components already standing ready in the pastry section.