No. 3546

Charlotte Corday

Obtain some round crimped paper cases; cover the bottoms and sides with uncooked Andalusian ice cream (No. 3446) and fill the centers with biscuit glace preparation with vanilla (No. 3438), adding a little maraschino to it; also put in some candied orange peel cut in exceedingly thin fillets; powder the tops with pulverized macaroons and cover this with Andalusian ice cream and candied fruits. Lay them in a freezing box for an hour to finish freezing.

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For the Modern Kitchen

A composed frozen dessert in the Delmonico manner: a paper case lined with one ice cream, filled with a whipped biscuit glac éot with macaroon crumbs and candied fruit. Nothing here is difficult, but it depends on two cross-referenced base recipes and on a freezer cold enough to hold everything firm while you work.

The hinge: work cold and fastLine the cases with ice cream stiff enough to hold a wall, then return them to the freezer before filling. If the Andalusian layer slumps into the biscuit glac éothe whole point of the dessert, two distinct textures in one case, is lost.
"Uncooked" ice creamRanhofer's uncooked creams skip the custard stage, relying on raw cream and sugar, and in some cases raw egg, so the Andalusian layer is never cooked. Use pasteurized eggs, or substitute a cooked custard base, if it will be served to children, the elderly, or anyone pregnant.
Biscuit glac é,"text":"Not a biscuit and not churned. It is a p tfeoombe-style base of egg yolks or whites beaten with hot syrup, folded into whipped cream, which freezes smooth without a machine. Modern semifreddo is the same idea.Biscuit glacé is not churned: it is a bombe-style base of egg yolks beaten with hot syrup and folded into whipped cream, which freezes smooth without churning. Modern semifreddo is the same idea.
MaraschinoThe period spirit is a dry, faintly bitter cherry-pit liqueur of the Luxardo type, not the pink syrup from a jar of cocktail cherries. Keep the addition to a tablespoon or so per pint of base; alcohol depresses the freezing point and too much leaves the center soft.
Pulverized macaroonsAlmond macaroons, dried hard and crushed to a coarse powder, not coconut macaroons and not modern French macarons. Stale amaretti crushed in a bag are the closest supermarket equivalent.
Freezing boxIn 1894 this meant a lidded metal box buried in a tub of cracked ice and rock salt, which holds a temperature well below plain ice. A home freezer at 0F or lower does the same job; the stated hour is a minimum, and two to three hours gives a cleaner cut.
Paper casesRound crimped cases of the sort now sold as soufflé baking cups; the recipe gives no size. Double them or set them in a muffin tin so the walls stay upright while you fill them.
Yield and serviceThe original gives none. Reckon roughly a scant half cup of finished dessert per case, so a quart of combined bases fills eight to ten. Serve straight from the freezer in the paper, as an individual ice.

A Little History

The Epicurean (1894) is Charles Ranhofer's record of thirty years' cooking at Delmonico's in New York, and its ices run to dozens of little composed cases named for people, places and operas. Charlotte Corday was the young Norman woman who stabbed Jean-Paul Marat in his bath in July 1793 and went to the guillotine days later; by the nineteenth century she had become a stock figure of romantic tragedy in French painting and drama, which is very likely how her name reached a dessert menu rather than through any connection to the dish. The pun on charlotte, the molded pudding lined with biscuit or bread, is hard to miss and is often assumed to be deliberate, though Ranhofer says nothing about it. What the recipe really documents is the industrial cold of the Gilded Age restaurant: an ice cellar and a salt-and-ice freezing box let a kitchen line paper cups with soft cream, fill them, powder them and hold them firm until service.