No. 3561

Madeleine Ice Cream

Glace Madeleine

Decorate a Madeleine mold (Fig. 692) with candied fruits; coat the inside with vanilla ice cream (No. 3458) and fill with hazel-nut ice cream (No. 3464) into which have mingled a salpicon of fruits and whipped cream. In the very center lay a little apricot marmalade (No. 3675); pack this mold in ice and freeze for two hours; unmold on a napkin and surround with fancy cakes; serve at the same time a sauce made of whipped cream, vanilla ice cream and Curacoa.

← No. 3560 Macedoine of Fruits and St. Jacques Cups Ices & Ice Creams No. 3562 Madrilian →

For the Modern Kitchen

This is a bombe — a lined and filled mold — written for a kitchen with a chest of block ice and a set of numbered base recipes on hand. Read it as an assembly method rather than a standalone formula.

The hinge: work fast and coldThe lining must be spread while the vanilla ice cream is just soft enough to smear and no softer, then refrozen hard before the hazelnut filling goes in. If the shell slumps the two layers marble together and the unmolded dome loses its outline.
The cross-referenced basesNos. 3458, 3464 and 3675 are Ranhofer's vanilla ice cream, hazelnut ice cream and apricot marmalade. Any good vanilla and hazelnut (praline) ice cream will serve; the marmalade is a thick, sieved apricot preserve, not a chunky jam.
"Pack this mold in ice and freeze for two hours"In practice this meant burying the sealed mold in a tub of crushed ice, worked with salt to bring the temperature well below 32F; the recipe does not specify proportions. A modern freezer does the same job; two hours is a minimum, and overnight is better for a clean unmolding.
Madeleine moldRanhofer refers to a mold illustrated at Fig. 692, which is not reproduced here; it is a mold for a lined and filled ice, not the small shell tins sold for madeleine cakes today. A fluted metal mold or plain charlotte tin of a couple of quarts will serve.
Salpicon of fruitsA salpicon here is fruit cut into small, even dice — candied or preserved fruit, often macerated in liqueur and drained. Drain it well; loose syrup makes icy streaks through the filling.
Decorating the moldThe candied fruits are pressed against the chilled interior before the ice cream goes in, so they end up on the outside of the finished dome. Chill the mold thoroughly first or they will slide.
UnmoldingDip the mold briefly in warm water, wipe it, and invert onto a chilled platter; the napkin in the original absorbs meltwater and keeps the bombe from sliding.
The sauceVanilla ice cream melted into whipped cream with a splash of curaçao — a loose, pourable cream sauce rather than a custard. Mix it at the last moment and keep it cold.
YieldA mold of roughly two quarts would serve something like ten to twelve in wedges, with the fancy cakes around the base; the recipe gives no yield.

A Little History

Charles Ranhofer ran the kitchens at Delmonico's in New York, and The Epicurean (1894) is essentially that restaurant's working system set down in print — hence the numbered cross-references, which assume a brigade with vanilla ice cream and apricot marmalade already made. Molded and lined ice creams of this kind descend from the French bombe glacée, and were the standard grand dessert of the late nineteenth-century banquet: they could be built in advance, held in a packing of ice and salt, and brought out whole at the end of a long service. A great many of Ranhofer's ices are distinguished chiefly by their form and their liqueur. Curaçao, a bitter-orange-peel liqueur, appears constantly in his sauces, and the salpicon of candied fruit steeped in spirit is the same habit that produced tutti-frutti and plombières in the period.