No. 3549

Dice, Dominoes and Cards

Des, Dominos et Cartes

Dice.—Fill some cube-shaped tin molds two inches in diameter with hazel-nut ice cream (No. 3464); in the center lay some macaroons soaked in maraschino; pack in salted ice, freeze and unmold half an hour later. Imitate the black dots of the dice with small chocolate pastilles three-sixteenths of an inch in diameter, pressing them down into the ice; put them in a freezing box to freeze until the ice has become firm, then stand on a lace paper and cover each dice with a box of wafers cut square, being two and three-quarters inches on each side, held together with sugar cooked to "crack" (No. 171); fasten on top a quarter-inch ball of almond paste (No. 125) of four distinct colors, iced with caramel, or else a walnut emptied and filled with small candies; fasten together to enclose the candies.

Dominoes.—Have hinged tin molds two and three-eighths inches long by one and three-eighths wide and half an inch high, opening through their thickness; fill them half full with virgin maraschino cream and the other half with chocolate (No. 3449); pack in ice for half an hour, unmold, and in the center of the white side, and across from side to side, lay a strip of angelica, and on both sides of this range small dots of chocolate to imitate dominoes; form a small easel of wafers with a ledge at the base; on each side place two dominoes, making four for each guest, and over the whole stand a cover as explained for the dice.

Cards--Procure square boxes made of pasteboard, each panel having a playing card on it. These boxes should have double boxes filling in the interior; fill this inside box with ice cream, then serve.

← No. 3548 Countess Leda Ice Cream Ices & Ice Creams No. 3550 Eggs a la Tremontaine, Red Wine Sauce →

For the Modern Kitchen

These are three assembly projects rather than three recipes: the ice cream itself is made elsewhere in the book, and what Ranhofer describes here is moulding, decorating and boxing. Read the whole entry before starting, because everything happens against the clock while the ice is hard.

The hinge: work cold and fastMoulded ices unmould cleanly only when they are frozen hard right through, and they lose their edges within a minute or two in a warm room. Chill the moulds, decorate on a tray set over ice or straight from the freezer, and return each piece to the freezer between steps rather than finishing one dice completely before starting the next.
Salted ice and "freezing box"Packing in salted ice means burying the filled moulds in a bucket of crushed ice mixed with coarse salt, commonly about three parts ice to one of salt, which drives the temperature well below 32F. A modern freezer is the nearest substitute, but it works more slowly than a salt-and-ice pack, so allow longer than the half hour Ranhofer states and judge by whether the cube is hard right through before unmoulding.
Sugar cooked to "crack"Ranhofer's "crack" is the stage period cooks put at roughly 290-310F, near what a modern thermometer calls hard crack. Used here only as a glue for the wafer boxes, applied in the smallest possible dab: at that temperature it sets in seconds and it will burn skin, so dip the wafer edge rather than pouring.
MaraschinoThe original maraschino is a dry cherry liqueur from Dalmatia, not the sweet red syrup from a jar of cocktail cherries. Alcohol lowers the freezing point, so a heavy hand here gives a soft ice that will not hold a cube shape.
"Virgin" creamThe term appears to mean a plain, uncoloured cream ice, flavoured and frozen without the tinted or custard-rich treatment of other creams, which is why it reads as white against the chocolate half. Any plain white ice cream will work for the domino.
AngelicaCandied stems of Angelica archangelica, sold in strips and pale green. Traditional for the domino's dividing line; a strip of candied citron peel or a thin band of dark chocolate gives the same effect if angelica is unavailable.
Chocolate pastillesSmall flat chocolate discs about 3/16 inch across. Chocolate nonpareils or the flat side of chocolate sprinkles work; press them into the surface while the ice is still slightly yielding, then refreeze, or they will sit proud and fall off.
The card boxesPasteboard with a printed playing card glued to each panel is decoration, not a container: the inner box holds the ice cream. Line any modern equivalent with a food-safe cup or paper case rather than filling printed board directly.
Yield and serviceRanhofer specifies two dominoes on each side of the easel, making four for each guest, so count moulds accordingly. The dice and the dominoes both go to the table under a wafer cover; the cards are served in their own pasteboard boxes.

A Little History

This comes from Charles Ranhofer's The Epicurean (1894), the enormous record of his years as chef at Delmonico's in New York, and it belongs to a genre the French called glaces fantaisie "ices moulded, coloured and dressed to look like something other than ice cream. Pewter and tin hinged moulds in the shape of fruit, game birds, asparagus bundles and, as here, gaming pieces were standard equipment in a nineteenth-century pastry department, and the confectioner's skill lay in the disguise as much as the flavour. The dice, dominoes and cards suggest some sort of gaming table; the wafer cover concealing a walnut full of sweets belongs to the period's taste for a dessert that contained a small surprise for each guest. That such elaborate work was written down at all reflects the book's purpose: Ranhofer was setting out a professional kitchen's entire repertoire, including the pieces that only a brigade with a drawer of specialist moulds could ever have attempted.