No. 3489

Cavour Pudding

Pouding a la Cavour

Pick, wash and cook in an abundance of water half a pound of Piedmontese rice, leaving it boil for twenty minutes; then drain it off and place it in a vessel to maeerate for two hours in a hot twenty-two degree vanilla syrup; afterward drain. Break ten raw egg-yolks in a tinned copper basin; add eight ounces of sugar and mix well, stirring in a pint of boiling milk; cook this preparation on a slow fire without boiling and without ceasing to stir until it covers the spatula, then remove; allow to cool and add to it one pint of cream and a quarter of a pound of almonds pounded with two gills of water; strain this forcibly through a sieve and freeze. Coat a two-quart pudding mold with vanilla ice cream (No. 3458), fill up the inside in distinct layers of the prepared ice cream, well-drained rice, and preserved pineapple cut in three-eighths of an inch squares. Freeze for one hour and a half in salted ice for each quart of pudding, then turn it out on a napkin and serve. Serve separately a sauce made of vanilla ice cream mingled with rum and whipped cream.

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For the Modern Kitchen

Ranhofer's frozen pudding is really three preparations assembled cold: a sweetened rice, an almond-enriched custard ice, and a lining of plain vanilla ice cream. The order of work matters more than any single step, since the rice needs two hours of soaking and the custard needs to be fully chilled before churning.

The twenty-two degree syrupDegrees here are almost certainly Baumé, read on a saccharometer, not temperature; Ranhofer gives syrup strengths this way throughout. Twenty-two degrees is a moderately heavy syrup, on the order of 40 percent sugar by weight; flavor it with vanilla and use it hot so the rice absorbs it.
Piedmontese riceA short, starchy risotto rice; Arborio is the closest easy substitute (Carnaroli is a twentieth-century variety, so not what Ranhofer had). Twenty minutes in abundant water leaves it fully soft, which is what you want in a frozen pudding, where firm grains read as gritty.
Gills and ouncesA gill is half a cup, so two gills of water for the pounded almonds is one cup. Eight ounces of sugar is weight, about 1 1/8 cups; the half pound of rice is roughly 1 1/4 cups dry.
The custard is the hingeTen yolks with a pint of milk will scramble if it boils. Cook to 175-180F, when it coats the spatula, and strain into a cold bowl at once; a curdled base cannot be rescued by churning.
Tinned copper basinUse a heavy stainless saucepan or a bowl over barely simmering water. Bare copper can react with the mixture, and antique tinned linings are not worth the risk.
The almond milkPounding a quarter pound of blanched almonds with a cup of water and pressing it hard through a sieve gives almond milk, not almond paste. A food processor does the pounding; squeeze the pulp in a cloth to get all the liquid, then discard the solids.
Freezing without salted iceChurn the base in an ice cream maker, then line the chilled two-quart mold with softened vanilla ice cream and build the layers. Ranhofer allows an hour and a half in salted ice for each quart, so three hours for this mold; in a home freezer allow at least that long, and let it sit at room temperature a few minutes before unmolding.
Yield and the sauceTwo quarts serves ten to twelve. The accompanying sauce is vanilla ice cream let down to a pourable state and stirred with rum and whipped cream; keep it loose enough to spoon around the pudding.

A Little History

The name honors Camillo Benso, Count of Cavour, the Piedmontese statesman who engineered Italian unification and died in 1861 -- a fashionable dedication in the decades after, when kitchens named dishes for political figures much as they named them for singers. The Piedmontese rice in the recipe fits: Piedmont was and remains one of Italy's main rice-growing regions, and Charles Ranhofer compiled The Epicurean (1894) from his years as chef at Delmonico's in New York. Frozen rice puddings of this kind belong to the elaborate bombe tradition, where a mold was lined with one ice and packed with another, then buried in salt and ice to set -- a showpiece course that suited a restaurant kitchen with a steady supply of ice.