No. 3537

Cream Spongade a la Parepa

Spongade Creme a la Parepa

Cream spongades are made by putting into a vessel four gills of fresh cream and almond milk made with five ounces of sweet and one ounce of bitter almonds; also eight egg-whites, mixing in three-quarters of a pound of sugar; beat well together, strain and freeze in medium-sized freezers; one to congeal the mixture and the other to work it. When the composition is in the first freezer, turn the latter quickly with the right hand, and as soon as the preparation adheres to the sides remove it to the second or smaller one, then work to give it body, and to incorporate plenty of air into the ice. Then add a salpicon of fruits cut in quarter-inch squares. Mold the ice in a spongade-shaped mold (Fig. 666), coated inside with pistachio cream.

← No. 3536 Spongade a la Medicis Ices & Ice Creams No. 3538 Alaska, Florida →

For the Modern Kitchen Do not make this as written.

This is a frozen mousse-type ice from Ranhofer's professional repertoire, and two of its components put it outside what can be made in a kitchen today. The notes below explain the recipe rather than adapt it.

The bitter almonds are the problemOne ounce of bitter almonds is not a flavouring nuance but a measured dose of amygdalin, which releases hydrogen cyanide when the nuts are ground and wetted. Nothing in this recipe involves heat, so nothing drives off or destroys it; the mixture goes straight into the freezer. Raw bitter almonds cannot legally be sold for eating in the United States and are restricted elsewhere for exactly this reason.
Uncooked egg whiteEight raw whites are beaten in and never brought to any temperature at all. Freezing suspends Salmonella, it does not kill it, and a spongade is eaten straight from the mold. Modern frozen preparations built on egg either use a cooked base or pasteurised whites.
If you want the dishUse a current recipe for a frozen almond mousse or semifreddo, built on a cooked custard or pasteurised egg, with sweet almonds only.
What "almond milk" meant hereNot the carton product. Almonds were blanched, pounded to a paste with a little water, and the liquid pressed out through a cloth — a thick, oily infusion far richer than anything sold under that name now.
Four gillsA gill is half a cup, so four gills is two cups of cream. Three-quarters of a pound of sugar is roughly 1 3/4 cups, a high proportion, which lowers the freezing point and keeps the mixture soft.
The two-freezer methodRanhofer's hand-cranked pails did two different jobs: the larger chilled the mixture until it began to set against the walls, the smaller was worked hard to beat air in. A domestic ice-cream churn does both stages in one vessel; the point of the transfer was volume, which is what distinguishes a spongade from a plain ice.
Salpicon and pistachio liningA salpicon is simply a dice — here fruit cut in quarter-inch squares, folded in at the end. The mold is lined with a thin coat of pistachio ice before filling, so the turned-out shape shows a green shell.

A Little History

The Epicurean (1894) is Charles Ranhofer's record of thirty-odd years as chef at Delmonico's in New York, and its ices section is the most extravagant part of the book amed of of them named for guests, singers and public figures. This one honours Euphrosyne Parepa-Rosa, the soprano who toured America heavily in the 1860s and 70s; naming a dessert after a visiting artist was standard Delmonico's flattery, and the neighbouring recipes carry names like Medicis and Florida. The bitter-almond note running through it was ordinary nineteenth-century confectionery practice: bitter almonds, or the essence pressed from them, supplied the marzipan flavour that vanilla and sweet almonds alone could not. Regulation of the trade came only later, which is why a recipe like this reads as unremarkable in its own pages and unmakeable in ours.