No. 3526

Parfait Amour Sherbet

Sorbet Parfait Amour

Pour into a freezer one pint of raspberry water ice (No. 3607), one pint of orange water ice (No. 3605) and a pint of cherry water ice (No. 3602); mix thoroughly and add to them half a gill of Curacoa, half a gill of maraschino, one gill of kirsch or one gill parfait amour cordial and half a pint of champagne just when ready to serve. Dress in tulips made of gum paste (No. 3624) or pulled sugar (No. 3618).

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For the Modern Kitchen

This is a service-time assembly rather than a churned ice: three finished water ices are combined, spiked, and slackened with champagne at the last moment. Everything depends on the timing of that last step.

Add the wine at the table, not beforeChampagne and spirits both depress the freezing point sharply. Fold in the liqueurs and champagne only as the glasses go out; stirred in early, the whole thing collapses into a cold soup.
Gills and pintsA gill is 4 fl oz (half a cup), so half a gill is 2 fl oz (a quarter cup). The total addition is about 16 fl oz of liquid — 8 fl oz of liqueurs plus 8 fl oz of champagne — to 48 fl oz of ice, which is why the finish is deliberately slushy.
An ambiguous "or"Ranhofer's phrasing can be read two ways: curaçao, maraschino and kirsch together, or curaçao, maraschino and a gill of parfait amour cordial in place of the kirsch. The second reading fits the name of the sorbet.
Parfait amourA purple, violet-and-citrus cordial with a vanilla note, still bottled by a few European houses. Crème de violette is the nearest substitute; it is sweeter and more floral, so cut the quantity if the base ices are already sweet.
"Pour into a freezer"In 1894 this meant the inner can of an ice-and-salt pail freezer, used here simply as a cold mixing vessel. A chilled metal bowl set in an ice bath does the same job — you are blending, not churning.
The three water icesRaspberry, orange and cherry water ices in the source book are all sugar-syrup sorbets with no dairy. Good commercial sorbets work, but taste for sweetness first: commercial sorbets may run sweeter than Ranhofer's, and sugar plus 16 oz of added liquor and wine will keep the mixture from setting at all.
The tulipsGum paste or pulled sugar tulips are a professional garnish and entirely optional. Chilled coupes or small stemmed glasses are the sensible modern vessel; the sorbet should be spooned, not scooped.
YieldRoughly two quarts finished, which is twelve to sixteen servings at the small portion this course was meant to be, mid-dinner.

A Little History

Charles Ranhofer spent more than thirty years as chef at Delmonico's in New York, and The Epicurean (1894) is essentially that kitchen's working archive: over three thousand five hundred numbered items, cross-referenced so a cook could build a dish from parts made elsewhere in the book, as this one is. The sorbet here belongs to the punch or sorbet course, served partway through a long formal dinner to clear the palate before the roast — a convention of nineteenth-century service that survives now mostly as a wedding-menu curiosity. The name comes from the liqueur: parfait amour, "perfect love," a violet-tinted cordial flavoured with citrus peel, spices and often vanilla, generally traced to eighteenth-century French and Dutch distillers and found in the bar books of Ranhofer's era, valued for its colour as much as its taste. Ranhofer's version is characteristically extravagant, folding three separate water ices, three spirits and champagne into a single small glass.