No. 3569

Neapolitan Ice Cream

Glace Napolitaine

Pack in a freezer a Neapolitan mold as represented in Fig. 698; it must be made in three divisions; fill one of the round parts with vanilla ice cream (No. 3458), the other with pistachio ice cream (No. 3454), and the flat or center part with strawberry water ice (No. 3607), having the mold quite full so that when forcibly closed the surplus cream runs out all around, thus preventing the ice from becoming salty; pack it well in ice and let freeze for one hour; unmold on a small board and cut it into five-eights of an inch slices with a special tinned copper or silver-plated knife so as not to blacken the ice (Fig. 700); this knife should be dipped into warm water every time a slice is cut. Dress these slices on small lace papers.

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For the Modern Kitchen

Ranhofer's Neapolitan is an assembly job: three finished ices packed into a hinged mold, hardened in salt and ice, then sliced. The work is in the packing and the slicing, not the cooking.

The hinge: overfill the moldThe mold must be so full that closing it forces cream out of the seam. Any air gap lets the salt brine wick in, and a single salty slice ruins the plate. Wipe the closed mold and, if you can, seal the seam with butter or tape before burying it.
What the mold isRanhofer's Neapolitan mold (Fig. 698) is made in three divisions: two round parts for the ice creams and a flat or centre part for the water ice, closed forcibly so the surplus runs out. A loaf pan lined with plastic wrap gives a similar layered block: fill it in three layers, freezing each until firm before adding the next.
Freezing in salt and ice"Pack it well in ice" means packing crushed ice and coarse salt around the sealed mold; the recipe gives no proportion, though roughly three parts ice to one of salt is the usual working mixture. A domestic freezer will also harden it, but allow longer; the mixture needs to be harder than scoopable to slice cleanly.
One hour is for brine, not a freezerAn hour applies to the salt-and-ice pack, which can run below 0F. If you use a domestic freezer, allow longer and let the block sit at room temperature two or three minutes before turning it out.
The knifeTinned copper and silver plate were specified because steel of the period reacted with fruit acid and left grey streaks on the ice. Stainless steel has made the problem obsolete. The warm-water dip between slices is Ranhofer's own direction: a warmed blade cuts cleanly through the hardened block.
Five-eighths of an inchAbout 1.6 cm. Thinner slices slump before they reach the table; thicker ones look clumsy on a lace paper.
The three componentsVanilla and pistachio ice creams against a strawberry water ice -- a fruit ice with no dairy. The water ice supplies the third colour of the block.
Yield and serviceServe at once on doilies or small lace papers, as directed.

A Little History

Charles Ranhofer ran the kitchens at Delmonico's in New York for some three decades, and The Epicurean (1894) is his catalogue of that repertoire -- several thousand numbered items, cross-referenced so that a dish like this one is really just an instruction to combine three recipes printed elsewhere in the book. The name points to Naples, which was associated in nineteenth-century Europe with layered and molded ices; Italian ice makers are generally credited with carrying the style into France and then into American hotel kitchens, and the tricolor block was a standard of formal service long before it was a supermarket carton. The three flavors here are Ranhofer's, not a fixed canon: chocolate later replaced pistachio in American practice. What dates the recipe most precisely is the warning about blackening the ice -- before stainless steel, cutting acidic food with a steel blade was a visible problem.