No. 3562

Madrilian

Madrilene

Place in a vessel twelve raw egg-yolks and half a pound of sugar, diluting slowly with a pint of boiling milk that has just had a quarter of a vanilla stick infused therein for fifteen minutes; strain through a fine sieve. Butter some timbale molds (No. 3, Fig. 137) and fill them with the preparation; stand them in a sautoir with boiling water to reach to half their height and poach; when they are firm to the touch leave stand till cold, then unmold. Pound a quarter of a pound of sweet almonds and a few bitter ones, all freshly peeled; moisten slowly with a quart of milk and strain forcibly through a napkin; add ten ounces of sugar and a gill of kirsch, also a little vanilla syrup (No. 3165); strain, freeze, and when the ice has congealed mix in one Italian meringue egg-white (No. 140). Mold in cylindrical molds two and a half inches in diameter by two inches in height, placing the small timbale directly in the center; freeze for half an hour, then unmold and lay on lace paper; on top have a handsome brandied plum, and around this and the base set an even row of cherries cut in two.

← No. 3561 Madeleine Ice Cream Ices & Ice Creams No. 3563 Marvelous →

For the Modern Kitchen Do not make this as written.

This is a composite bombe from Ranhofer's The Epicurean: a small poached vanilla custard set inside a frozen almond-milk ice. One ingredient in it is the reason the recipe cannot be followed today.

Bitter almondsThe almond milk calls for sweet almonds "and a few bitter ones." Bitter almonds contain amygdalin, which releases hydrogen cyanide when the nuts are crushed and wetted heoetting the exact conditions this recipe creates when they are pounded and moistened with milk. Nothing in the method drives off the cyanide, and the mixture is then frozen and eaten cold. Unroasted bitter almonds cannot legally be sold for food in the United States and are restricted in many other countries. A current ice-cream recipe should be used instead.
Why "a few" is the problemFigures commonly cited put the potentially lethal dose for an adult at some dozens of bitter almonds, with far fewer for a child, and toxin content varies widely between nuts. An unquantified "a few" pounded into a quart of milk and divided among moulds gives no way to know what any one serving contains. This is not a case where reducing the amount makes the instruction sound.
The rest of the construction, for referenceThe custards are poached, not baked: the moulds stand in a sautoir -- a wide, straight-sided pan -- in boiling water reaching half their height, only until firm to the touch, then left to cool and unmoulded. The Italian meringue folded into the churned ice is egg white beaten with hot sugar syrup, which lightens the outer shell.
Units, if you are reading rather than cookingA gill is half a cup, so the kirsch is 4 fl oz. The finished cylinders are 2 1/2 inches across by 2 inches tall; the recipe states no yield, and the number of portions cannot be derived from the quantities given.

A Little History

Ranhofer ran the kitchen at Delmonico's in New York for over thirty years, and The Epicurean (1894) is essentially that restaurant's working repertoire written down, cross-referenced by number so a cook could chase a garnish or a syrup through the book. The name follows the house habit of labelling elaborate moulded ices after places and people; Madeleine sits immediately before this one, Marvelous after it. The form is a bombe: an outer ice moulded around a contrasting core, here a poached custard hidden inside almond ice, so the cut surface reveals the surprise. Bitter almonds were a standard flavouring in nineteenth-century confectionery on both sides of the Atlantic, valued for the intense marzipan note that sweet almonds alone do not give; their toxicity was known but treated as a matter of dosage rather than prohibition, and commercial benzaldehyde flavouring later displaced them in professional kitchens.