No. 3566

Montelimar with Hazel-Nut Cream

Montelimar a la Creme aux Noisettes

Hazel-nut Cream.—Roast a quarter of a pound of hazel-nuts; carefully remove their outer skins and pound with two gills of cream. Put in a tinned basin twelve egg-whites and ten ounces of sugar; stir to mix thoroughly, then moisten with a pint of boiling milk; set the basin on a slow fire, stir continuously, then remove from the fire when the preparation covers the spatula, add the nuts and leave stand till cool. Pour in a pint of rich sweet cream; strain through a sieve and freeze.

Montelimar.—Pound in a mortar three ounces of peeled sweet almonds with a gill of kirsch; cook ten ounces of sugar to three hundred and two degrees Fahrenheit or "small crack;" mix it slowly in a mortar with the almonds, leave till cold, then divide it into three parts; one of these color red with vegetal carmine flavored with Curacoa, the other color green with spinach green or vegetal green flavored with orange flower water, and keep the third part white; roll them each into three-eights of an inch thick strings. Cut some lady fingers (No. 3377) to the same size, and baste over with maraschino; pack a Montelimar mold (Fig. 695) in ice; coat it with a thin layer of the nut ice cream (No. 3461), fill it perfectly full, intermingling the various colors of almond paste and the biscuits, and close it forcibly. Two hours after unmold and cut in slices to serve.

← No. 3565 Mokabelle Ices & Ice Creams No. 3567 Muffs a la Dejazet, Venus Cream →

For the Modern Kitchen

Two preparations under one heading: an egg-white ice cream flavored with roasted hazelnuts, and a molded bombe layered with colored almond paste and liqueur-soaked lady fingers. Ranhofer assumes a professional kitchen with ice and rock salt on hand, so most of the translation work is in equipment.

Gills and pintsA gill is half a cup, so two gills of cream is one cup and a gill of kirsch is half a cup. Ranhofer's pints are US pints, 16 fl oz.
The custard is built on whites, not yolksTwelve egg whites with sugar and hot milk gives a pale, clean-tasting base rather than a yellow custard. Whites coagulate at a lower temperature than yolks and can curdle into shreds with little warning, so cook it over barely simmering water and pull it the moment it coats the spatula, as the recipe directs; Ranhofer gives no temperature.
Tinned basin, slow fireA tin-lined copper bowl over a low flame. A stainless bowl set over a pan of simmering water does the same job with far less risk of scrambling.
Freezing"Freeze" here means a hand-cranked sorbetiere packed in ice and coarse salt. Any modern churn works; chill the base thoroughly overnight first, as the strained hazelnut milk is quite thin.
302F and "small crack"The Fahrenheit figure is the one to trust; small crack in period usage covers a range and different books place it differently. Cook the sugar to 302F on a thermometer and work quickly, because it sets hard within seconds of leaving the heat.
The coloringsVegetal carmine is cochineal, still sold as carmine; "spinach green" is a green made by pressing and heating spinach juice. Ordinary food colorings give the same three-tone effect with less work, and the flavor comes from the Curacao and orange flower water regardless.
The Montelimar moldA deep mold with a close-fitting lid, since the recipe says to close it forcibly, packed in ice rather than put in a freezer; the shape is shown only in Fig. 695 and is not described in the text. A metal loaf pan or terrine lined with plastic wrap will unmold cleanly and slices the same way; freeze at least four hours, longer than the two hours Ranhofer allows for an ice-and-salt pack.
Cross-referencesNo. 3377 is his lady fingers and No. 3461 is a nut ice cream, which is what lines the mold. Good bought lady fingers absorb the maraschino well; the nut ice cream can simply be the hazelnut cream above.
YieldThe hazelnut cream makes roughly one and a half to two quarts. The finished molded bombe will cut into a dozen or so slices, depending on the mold.

A Little History

Montelimar, in the Drome department of southeastern France, on the Rhone, is the town most associated with nougat, the white confection of egg white, honey, sugar and almonds; the name attached to desserts built from almond paste, egg whites and candied color, which is what this molded ice imitates in frozen form. Charles Ranhofer, chef at Delmonico's in New York, published The Epicurean in 1894 as a record of the restaurant's repertoire, and its ice chapter runs to hundreds of numbered entries because molded ices were a standard close to a formal nineteenth-century dinner. The elaborate mold, the three-color almond paste and the liqueur-basted biscuits all belong to an elaborate style of dessert service, and the egg-white base rather than a yolk custard keeps the ice pale enough for the colored strings running through it to read clearly in a slice.