No. 3584

Tortoni Cups

Coupes Tortoni

This ice requires the use of lead molds representing plain, shallow, round baskets; line them with rather thin strawberry ice cream (No. 3451) and freeze for one hour; unmold and lay over sheets of paper placed on a tin; fill quite full and rounded on top with iced biscuit preparation (No. 3435) and put them into the freezing box. When the iced biscuit is sufficiently congealed decorate each ice cream with roses of medium size molded in raspberry, orange, lemon and pineapple water ices, one quart being sufficient for twelve flowers; fill some of the rose molds with lemon and orange, others with raspberry and pineapple. Pack in ice, freeze and unmold; lay each one on the above biscuit preparation, it being sufficiently hard to have the rose set firmly on top of the roundest part; put them in a freezing box (Fig. 622) for half an hour and serve.

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For the Modern Kitchen Do not make this as written.

This is an assembly job rather than a recipe: a strawberry ice cream shell, a mound of biscuit glacé, and a molded water-ice rose on top. Ranhofer assumes you have the three component recipes already made and a salt-and-ice cabinet to hold everything at working temperature.

Do not use lead moldsThe one instruction to ignore outright. Nineteenth-century pastry kitchens used soft lead and lead-tin alloy ice molds because they took fine detail cheaply; lead leaches into cold acidic food such as fruit ices. Use silicone, stainless, or tinned copper molds in a shallow round basket shape instead.
The "freezing box"Fig. 622 is a box packed with cracked ice and rock salt. A home freezer set at its coldest, or a chest freezer, does the same work. Bury the tray of unmolded shells rather than leaving them on an open shelf where the door swings.
Iced biscuit preparationNo. 3435 is Ranhofer's biscuit glace; such preparations are generally a whipped yolk-and-sugar-syrup base folded with whipped cream and frozen still, without churning. It sets softer than ice cream, which is why it can be piled high and rounded. If your version of the yolk base is not cooked to 160F, use pasteurized eggs.
Line the molds thinPress chilled but pliable strawberry ice cream into the mold with the back of a cold spoon, about a quarter inch. Too thick and the cup reads as a scoop of ice cream with a decoration; the point is a crisp shell holding a soft center.
UnmoldingDip the mold in cool water for two or three seconds, not warm, and invert onto parchment. Return the shells to the freezer to harden before filling, or the walls slump.
The rosesOne quart of water ice yields twelve flowers, so a quart total serves a dozen cups. Ranhofer has some of the rose molds filled with lemon and orange, others with raspberry and pineapple. Set each rose on the biscuit only once that surface is firm enough to take the weight without a dent.
Final rest and servingThe recipe ends with half an hour in the freezing box before serving. Serve on a chilled plate, one per person, twelve from the quantities given.

A Little History

Tortoni takes its name from the Neapolitan-born Tortoni, whose café on the Boulevard des Italiens in Paris was among the most fashionable ice houses of the early nineteenth century, and the name attached itself to any number of frozen confections built on a whipped, still-frozen cream base rather than a churned one. Charles Ranhofer, who ran the kitchens at Delmonico's in New York and published The Epicurean in 1894, was working within that French tradition and treating it as a matter of course: his ice chapter runs to hundreds of numbered entries, each cross-referencing others. The molded rose in four flavors is the tell of the period — before mechanical refrigeration made ices casual, the labor of molds, hand-cracked ice and rock salt was itself the luxury on display.