No. 3577

Rice a la Ristori

Riz a la Ristori

Coat a dome-shaped mold with vanilla ice cream (No. 3458), range on the bottom a layer of crushed candied chestnuts, over these a bed of chocolate mousse (No. 3473), then another layer of chestnuts and apricot marmalade (No. 3675); finish filling with a light burnt almond cream (No. 3455). Have the mold quite full, forcing the cover on tightly, pack in salted ice and freeze for three-quarters of an hour. Unmold on a garnishing of thoroughly boiled rice macerated in an eighteen-degree vanilla syrup; serve a sauce-boatful of apricot maraschino sauce at the same time.

← No. 3576 Ribambelle Ices & Ice Creams No. 3578 Rice with Maraschino →

For the Modern Kitchen

This is a bombe in the classic Delmonico's manner: a lined mold filled in strata, frozen solid, turned out onto a garnish. Ranhofer writes in cross-references, so the whole thing depends on components built elsewhere in the book.

The hinge: a hard, even liningThe vanilla ice cream shell must be spread on a chilled mold while barely soft and then re-frozen firm before anything is layered in, or the fillings push through and the bombe unmolds in streaks. Work fast, in short sessions, returning the mold to the freezer between them.
Salted ice and 45 minutesAn ice-and-rock-salt pack sits well below 0F and sets a full mold in about the time given. A domestic freezer at 0F will not; allow at least 4-6 hours, and overnight for a two-quart dome.
Sealing the mold"Forcing the cover on tightly" matters because the old brine pack would otherwise seep salt water into the seam. If you improvise with plastic wrap and a bowl, press out every air pocket so the surface does not frost.
Candied chestnutsMarrons glacés, sold whole or in broken pieces; the broken "brisures" are cheaper and are exactly what "crushed" wants. Chestnut purée sweetened will not substitute, as it has no texture to give.
Burnt almond creamRanhofer's burnt almond is praline: almonds caramelized, ground, and worked into an ice cream base. It is not almond extract, and it is not scorched.
Eighteen-degree vanilla syrupDegrees Baumé, read on a saccharometer; 18 Baumé is roughly 32 to 34 percent sugar by weight, so about 1 part sugar to 2 parts water, boiled with vanilla and cooled. Modern practice would call it a light syrup.
Apricot marmalade and the sauceMarmalade here means a thick, sieved apricot preserve, not the citrus kind. The sauce is presumably that preserve loosened and flavored with maraschino liqueur, a clear cherry distillate, not the syrup from a jar of cocktail cherries.
The rice garnishBoil short-grain rice until quite soft, drain, and let it steep in the cooled syrup, then chill. It goes around the base as a cool, slack bed, so keep it loose rather than letting it set into a cake.
YieldBombe molds vary in size; a dome of roughly 2 quarts would cut into about 10 to 12 wedges. Slice with a knife dipped in hot water and wiped between cuts.

A Little History

Charles Ranhofer ran the Delmonico's kitchen through the decades when New York fed and flattered every visiting celebrity, and the practice of naming an elaborate frozen dish after the guest of honor was standard in the house. Adelaide Ristori, the Italian tragedienne whose American tours in the 1860s and after made her a fixture of the theatrical press, is the likely namesake. The construction itself belongs to the high nineteenth-century bombe: a mold masked with one ice cream, filled with mousses and creams in strata, and frozen in a brine pack, so that the interest lies as much in the cut face as in the flavor. Chestnut, chocolate, apricot and praline in one dome is the sort of accumulation The Epicurean takes for granted and later cookery quietly abandoned.