No. 3583

Toronchino Procope

Put ten raw egg-yolks into a tin basin containing three-quarters of a pound of sugar, and half a pound of burnt almonds crushed with about a gill of cream. Set on a slow fire, stir steadily until the preparation covers the spatula, then take from the fire and let stand till cold. Now add a pint of cream and a little orange flower water, strain the whole through a sieve, freeze and use the cream to fill some plaited paper cases, scattering shredded pistachios over the tops.

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For the Modern Kitchen

A praline custard ice under an Italian name, thickened over direct heat and served in paper cases. The whole thing turns on how far you take the custard.

The hinge: cook to nappe, not beyondTen yolks with only a gill of cream underneath will scramble fast over direct heat. Work over the lowest flame, or set the basin over barely simmering water, and pull it the moment it coats the spatula — about 175-180F. Straining afterwards, as directed, catches any threads.
A gillFour fluid ounces, half a cup. The finished mix is that gill plus a pint of cream, so roughly 20 fl oz of dairy to ten yolks and three-quarters of a pound of sugar.
Burnt almondsNot scorched almonds but praline: almonds cooked in caramelized sugar, cooled hard and crushed. Buy praline paste or make it from equal weights sugar and blanched almonds; grind to a coarse powder before it goes in with the cream.
Sugar levelThree-quarters of a pound to about two and a half cups of dairy is very sweet by current taste, but sugar is what keeps a hand-frozen ice soft. If you cut it, expect a harder set and let the ice temper longer before serving.
Orange flower water"A little" means a little — a teaspoon in this quantity, tasted after it has chilled. Orange flower waters vary widely in strength, and an overdose reads as soap.
FreezingChill the strained base thoroughly, ideally overnight, then run it in an ice cream machine. Ranhofer would have expected a freezing can turned in a salt-and-ice pail; the churn is doing the same work.
Plaited paper casesFluted paper cups, of the same family as the modern soufflé cup or petit-four case. Fill them, freeze hard on a tray, then top with shredded pistachios just before service so the green stays bright.
YieldAbout a quart and a half of finished ice, which fills roughly twelve to sixteen small cases.

A Little History

The name points two ways. Toronchino is generally traced to the Italian torroncino, a diminutive of torrone — the almond nougat whose caramelized-nut flavor is exactly what the burnt almonds supply here; torroncino ices were a standing item in Italian and French confectioners' repertoires through the nineteenth century. Procope honors the Café Procope, opened in Paris in 1686 by the Sicilian Francesco Procopio dei Coltelli, long credited in the trade as the house that made ices fashionable in France. Charles Ranhofer, who ran the kitchens at Delmonico's and published The Epicurean in 1894, devoted well over a hundred numbered entries to ices, and this one sits among them as a piece of professional lineage: an Italian flavor, a French pedigree, and a New York restaurant serving it in pleated paper cups.