No. 3573

Parisian Ice Cream

Glace a la Parisienne

Have some conical molds rounded on one end and pointed on the other (Fig. 703); fill them half with strawberry ice cream (No. 3451) and half with vanilla ice cream (No. 3458). The idea of using these molds is to avoid the necessity of using a spoon to mold the ice. On the round end lay a small macaroon soaked in maraschino; close the mold and remove any surplus ice issuing from the joints; pack in ice and freeze for an hour. On removing dress them in specially made glasses as shown in Fig. 703, and serve.

← No. 3572 Seville Oranges, and Orange Macedoine Basket Ices & Ice Creams No. 3574 Pears or Apples in Surprise →

For the Modern Kitchen

This is an assembly and molding instruction rather than a formula: Ranhofer assumes you already have two finished ice creams from earlier numbers and a working ice cave. The two things worth knowing are how to freeze a hinged mold without brine leaking in, and that the ice must be soft enough to press into the point of the cone.

What the recipe does not includeNos. 3451 and 3458 are the strawberry and vanilla ice creams, made elsewhere in the book. Any good churned strawberry and vanilla will do; both should be freshly churned and still soft, at about the consistency of thick frosting, so they fill the pointed end without air pockets.
The conical moldsTwo-piece metal cornet molds that close along a seam; the recipe only tells us they are rounded at one end, pointed at the other, and have joints that ice can escape from. Modern equivalents are hinged metal bombe or spumoni molds; small dariole molds or paper cones will hold the ice cream but not the point. Ranhofer's stated reason for the mold is that closing the halves shapes the ice without spooning or smoothing it.
"Pack in ice and freeze for an hour"Ranhofer says only ice; in practice this meant burying the closed molds in a tub of crushed ice mixed with coarse salt, commonly given as about three parts ice to one of salt by volume, which holds well below freezing. A domestic freezer at 0F does the same job but is likely to want two to three hours for a solid set rather than one.
Sealing the jointsWipe away any ice cream squeezed from the seam, as directed, then wrap the closed seam with a strip of buttered paper or foil before packing. Salt brine seeping through a joint will ruin the ice cream with a briny streak.
The macaroonAn 1894 macaroon is the almond-paste kind, crisp and small, not a coconut macaroon or a French macaron. Dip it briefly in maraschino rather than soaking it to collapse; the recipe places it against the rounded end of the mold.
MaraschinoHe means the dry Dalmatian cherry liqueur, Luxardo or similar, not the syrup from a jar of bright red cherries. The syrup is far sweeter and will read as candy against the vanilla.
UnmoldingDip the mold two or three seconds in warm water, dry it, unclasp, and slide the cone out point upward or point down into the glass. Have the serving glasses chilled beforehand; the cones soften quickly once handled.
Yield and serviceFigure one cone per person; Ranhofer calls for specially made glasses shown in his Fig. 703, so any small stemmed glass that will hold the cone upright is a reasonable substitute. As written the recipe scales with the number of molds you own.

A Little History

Charles Ranhofer, chef of Delmonico's in New York for some thirty years, published The Epicurean in 1894 as a complete record of the restaurant's repertoire, and its ice chapter runs to hundreds of numbered entries because molded ices were the standard finish to a formal American dinner in the 1880s and 90s. Names like a la Parisienne in this period signal Parisian restaurant manner rather than any particular French locality; the pointed cornet mold and the liqueur-soaked biscuit are both stock devices of the nineteenth-century glacier's trade. The insistence on a hinged mold to avoid a spoon is characteristic of the book's logic: in a kitchen serving hundreds of covers, a shape that comes out finished saves a garnisher's minute on every plate. Maraschino, imported from Zara on the Dalmatian coast, was the default flavoring liqueur for confectionery and ices throughout the century, well before the American cocktail cherry borrowed its name.