No. 3555

Jardiniere Cutlets

Cotelettes Jardiniere

Blanch half a pound of rice, refresh and return it to the saucepan with a pint and a half of boiling cream, half a pound of sugar and the peel of half a lemon. Boil up once, push it into the oven for an hour, then remove and whip it well, adding a quart of cream; freeze and as the preparation takes body mix into it as much sweetened whipped cream as there is ice. Mold in cutlet-shaped molds and when thoroughly frozen turn them out and dip each one in macaroon dust sifted through a fine sieve. Dress on a salpicon of fruit macerated in maraschino and thickened with apricot marmalade (No. 3675) prepared with maraschino; trim the handles with frills (No. 10) and serve at once.

← No. 3554 Harlequin Ice Cream Ices & Ice Creams No. 3556 La Grandina →

For the Modern Kitchen

A rice ice cream molded to look like breaded veal cutlets, complete with paper frills on the "bone." Nothing here is difficult, but the volume is banquet scale and the assembly matters more than the cooking.

Scale it down firstHalf a pound of rice, a pint and a half of cream, a further quart of cream, and then an equal volume of whipped cream folded in yields somewhere near a gallon of finished ice — 20 to 30 cutlets. Quartering the recipe gives a manageable batch and still fills a standard machine.
Blanch and refreshThis means boiling the rice briefly in water, then draining and rinsing under cold water. It washes off loose surface starch so the grains cook creamy in the cream rather than gluey.
Oven temperature"Push it into the oven for an hour" gives no temperature, and Ranhofer does not say to cover the pan. A slow oven, in the region of 300F, and a lid to keep the cream from drying out are reasonable modern choices. The rice should end up entirely soft with the cream mostly absorbed.
Whip it well means puréeWhip it well -- The text says only "whip it well," which will break the rice down to some degree. If you want the smooth body the mold suggests, a blender or food processor and a pass through a sieve will get you there; whole grains freeze into hard specks.
Fold the whipped cream at the right momentThe instruction to add it "as the preparation takes body" is the hinge. Fold in the sweetened whipped cream when the base is thick but still soft, before it sets hard, or it will streak and the mixture will not pack into the molds.
Molds and unmoldingCutlet molds are hinged tin forms; small oval pâté or savarin molds, or even a loaf pan cut into cutlet shapes, will substitute. Pack firmly to avoid air pockets, freeze several hours, and dip the mold in warm water for a second or two to release.
Macaroon dustDried almond macaroons crushed and sieved fine — the coating stands in for breadcrumbs on a real cutlet. Amaretti work well. Coat straight from the freezer and return to the freezer at once.
The salpicon and the maraschinoA salpicon is fruit diced small and macerated, here in maraschino liqueur, then bound with apricot preserve thinned with more maraschino. Kirsch is a reasonable stand-in. Warm the preserve to loosen it, then cool it fully before it meets the ice.
FrillsThe paper cutlet frills of No. 10 are still sold for lamb racks. They are decoration only, pushed into the narrow end so the plate reads as a cutlet at a glance.

A Little History

This comes from Charles Ranhofer's The Epicurean (1894), the record of his years as chef at Delmonico's in New York, and it belongs to a nineteenth-century taste for ices molded and dressed up as other dishes. Jardinière, from jardin, garden, normally signals a savory dish garnished with cut vegetables; Ranhofer borrows the term for a garnish of diced fruit, and the joke only lands because the diner recognizes the savory original. Rice turns up elsewhere as a base for ices in this period, the cooked grain giving body, and the macaroon crumb coating supplies both the look of breadcrumbs and a bit of almond flavor. The paper frill on the handle is the last detail of the disguise.