No. 3568

Mushrooms

Champignons

For these have some molds representing mushrooms of various sizes; fill them with maraschino ice cream (No. 3462), freeze, unmold and dip the ends or stalks in grated chocolate to imitate the roots. Dress piled high on a folded napkin.

← No. 3567 Muffs a la Dejazet, Venus Cream Ices & Ice Creams No. 3569 Neapolitan Ice Cream →

For the Modern Kitchen

A trompe-l'oeil ice from Ranhofer's dessert chapter: nothing is cooked, and the whole trick is in the molding and the finish. The instructions assume you already have maraschino ice cream (No. 3462) made and ready to pack.

The hinge is the temperature at moldingThe ice cream must be soft enough to pack into the mold without air pockets, then frozen hard again before unmolding. Pack it firm, smooth the base flat, freeze until solid through, then dip the mold briefly in warm water to release.
Maraschino ice creamNo. 3462 is flavored with maraschino, the clear liqueur distilled from marasca cherries crushed with their pits and leaves, not the syrup from a jar of neon cherries. Alcohol depresses the freezing point, so a maraschino ice sets softer than a plain one and needs longer and colder freezing to hold a molded shape.
Mushroom moldsNineteenth-century kitchens used hinged pewter or tinned-copper ice molds in fanciful shapes. Modern silicone molds work better and release cleanly; antique pewter molds are frequently lead-bearing and should be treated as display pieces rather than food vessels.
Grated chocolate for the "roots"Grate a hard dark chocolate finely and keep it cold and dry, spread on a chilled plate. Dip the stalk ends quickly; if the chocolate warms it clumps and smears rather than clinging as a dusty coating.
Working aheadUnmold, finish the stalks, and return the mushrooms to the freezer on a chilled tray until service. Attempting to unmold and garnish a dozen at the table guarantees puddles.
The folded napkinA period service convention for ices, usually explained as absorbing melt and keeping the pile from sliding. It looks handsome but buys only minutes; a well-chilled platter does more.
YieldRanhofer gives none. A quart of ice cream should fill something on the order of a dozen small mushroom molds, depending entirely on the size of the molds you have.

A Little History

The Epicurean (1894) is Charles Ranhofer's record of some thirty years as chef at Delmonico's in New York, and its ices section is where the restaurant's confectioner shows off. Molded ices imitating other foods were a long-established European conceit, generally traced to eighteenth-century French and Italian confectioners who turned out ice cream asparagus, ice cream hams and ice cream fruit from hinged pewter molds; the surprise of a cold sweet dressed as a vegetable was the entire point. Maraschino, distilled in Dalmatia from marasca cherries and their pits, lent the dish its faint bitter-almond note. That this fantasy sits in a chapter alongside straightforward Neapolitan ice cream says much about a kitchen expected to send out both.