No. 3563

Marvelous

Merveilleuse

Break six egg-yolks in a tinned basin with twelve ounces of sugar, a quart of boiling milk, and half a pound of freshly roasted, coarsely ground coffee; set the basin on a moderate fire and stir continuously, without permitting it to boil, until the preparation will cover the spatula; strain through a fine sieve, leave till cold and freeze, adding the same quantity of sweetened whipped cream, half a pound of chopped burnt almonds, and as much candied chestnuts broken in small pieces. Put one pint of orange water ice (No. 3605) in a freezer with the same amount of burnt hazel-nut ice cream (No. 3464) and as much whipped cream. With this preparation coat some small paper cases, fill the inside with the first preparation and surround with orange flowers.

← No. 3562 Madrilian Ices & Ice Creams No. 3564 Mignon Ice Cream →

For the Modern Kitchen

A bombe-style composition: a coffee custard ice studded with praline almonds and marrons, cased in a shell of three blended ices. Ranhofer writes for a brigade with a numbered reference book at hand, so several quantities are given as "the same amount" of something described elsewhere.

The custard is the hingeCook to the point where it coats the spatula and no further — roughly 175-180F. Coffee custards catch quickly because the grounds sit on the bottom of the pan; stir across the base continuously, or set the basin over simmering water.
"Tinned basin"A tin-lined basin, most likely tinned copper. Any heavy-bottomed saucepan or a stainless bowl over a water bath does the same job. Do not use unlined copper or aluminium with an egg custard.
Half a pound of coffeeEight ounces of coarsely ground coffee steeped in a quart of milk gives an intensely bitter infusion by modern taste, and it is meant to — the sugar, the whipped cream and the chestnuts all pull against it. "Freshly roasted" mattered more then, when ground coffee went stale in the barrel; buy whole beans and grind coarse.
Burnt almonds and candied chestnuts"Burnt almonds" are almonds cooked in caramel — praline, not scorched nuts. "Candied chestnuts" are marrons glacés, sold in jars; the broken pieces sold as brisures are cheaper and are exactly what is wanted here.
"The same quantity" of whipped creamGenuinely ambiguous. The likeliest reading is cream equal in volume to the frozen custard, folded in after churning — which nearly doubles the yield and lightens the texture considerably. Add less if you want a denser ice.
FreezingThe original assumes a freezer packed in ice and rock salt, worked by hand. A domestic churn does the first stage; the folded cream and the garnishes go in at the end, and the assembled cases then need several hours in the freezer to set hard.
The outer coatingEqual parts orange water ice, burnt hazelnut ice cream and whipped cream, blended and used to line the paper cases before the coffee mixture is filled in. Any orange sorbet and hazelnut-praline ice will stand in; work fast and keep the cases cold, or the lining slumps.
Orange flowersFresh orange blossom as a garnish, not orange flower water. Citrus blossom is seasonal and rarely sold; unsprayed edible flowers or a fine julienne of candied orange peel is the practical substitute.
YieldNone is given. The custard base alone is about a quart before the cream goes in, so the finished composition would fill a couple of dozen small paper cases, depending on their size.

A Little History

Merveilleuse — "marvelous" — belongs to the long list of fancifully named frozen desserts in Charles Ranhofer's The Epicurean (1894), the record of his decades as chef at Delmonico's in New York. The ices section runs to hundreds of numbered entries, many of them variations built by combining earlier numbers, which is why this one sends the reader off to No. 3605 and No. 3464 rather than repeating itself: the book was compiled as a working reference, addressed first of all to the professional kitchen. Names like Merveilleuse, Mignon and Madrilian were largely decorative, chosen to look well on a printed menu; the term merveilleuse had earlier attached to the extravagantly dressed women of Directory-era Paris, and by the nineteenth century it functioned in cookery as little more than a promise of luxury. What the recipe does document is the scale of a restaurant like Delmonico's in the 1890s — half a pound of freshly roasted coffee for one dessert, marrons glacés broken up as a mix-in, and fresh orange blossom on the plate, with the freezing still done in salt and ice.