No. 3589

Watermelon

Pasteque

Take a pound of the red pulp of a watermelon, the juice of four oranges and of three lemons, an orange and a lemon peel, also some syrup at twenty degrees. Bring the composition to eighteen-degree heat, strain through a sieve and freeze, adding half a gill of brandy and one quart of whipped cream (No. 50). Coat a watermelon-shaped mold with pistachio cream (No. 3454); on this place the above preparation, with strawberry water ice (No. 3607) laid in the center; pack and freeze for two hours; unmold and cut it up in four or else in two; on the red part insert imitation watermelon seeds made of chocolate. These halves or quarters can be cut in slices.

Large Pieces

← No. 3588 Vermeil Globules a la Damseaux Ices & Ice Creams No. 3590 Bacchus →

For the Modern Kitchen

Ranhofer is describing a bombe glacée disguised as a watermelon: a green pistachio shell, a pink watermelon cream, and a strawberry ice core. Most of the difficulty is in the vocabulary rather than the technique.

Degrees means Baumé, not temperatureDegrees means Baumé, not temperature -- "Syrup at twenty degrees" and "eighteen-degree heat" refer to sugar density read on a saccharometer (pèse-sirop), not to Fahrenheit or Celsius. Syrup at 20° Baumé is a dense syrup of roughly 36 percent sugar by weight (about one part sugar to two parts water); bringing the fruit mixture down to 18° Baumé means thinning slightly with water or juice until it reads about 33 percent sugar by weight, or about 1.14 specific gravity on a hydrometer.
Why the density mattersSugar concentration is what governs how hard the ice sets: too little sugar and the mixture freezes into a solid block, too much and it will barely set. If you have no saccharometer, aim for a sorbet base that tastes distinctly sweeter than you want the finished ice to taste, since cold mutes sugar.
Half a gill of brandyA gill is half a cup, so this is 2 fl oz, or 4 tablespoons, for the whole batch. Do not increase it. Alcohol depresses the freezing point, and a heavier hand will leave the bombe slushy no matter how long it is packed.
The cross-referencesNo. 50 is Ranhofer's plain whipped cream; heavy cream whipped to soft peaks does the job. No. 3454 is pistachio ice cream, No. 3607 a strawberry water ice. Modern equivalents of both work perfectly, though a commercial pistachio ice cream will be paler than his, which took its green from the nuts and a little coloring.
Lining the moldChill the mold hard, then press the softened pistachio cream against the walls in an even layer about half an inch thick, working quickly with the back of a spoon and returning it to the freezer whenever it slackens. This shell is what holds the shape when you unmold, so gaps show up as collapses.
Packing and freezing"Pack and freeze for two hours" means burying the sealed mold in a mixture of crushed ice and rock salt, roughly three parts ice to one of salt. A modern freezer at 0F does the same work; give it four hours or overnight rather than two, then dip the mold briefly in tepid water to release it.
Watermelon pulpUse only the deep red flesh, seeds removed, and strain it well. Watermelon is over 90 percent water, so the strained juice contributes color and perfume more than body, which is why the citrus and syrup carry the flavor.
Yield and servingThe recipe gives no yield, but a quart of whipped cream plus the fruit base and the two other ices suggests a mold of roughly three quarts, enough for a dozen or so servings. Cut into halves or quarters, press small pieces of dark chocolate into the pink flesh as seeds, and slice across as you would a real melon.

A Little History

Charles Ranhofer, chef at Delmonico's in New York, published The Epicurean in 1894, and this entry sits in a long chapter of molded ices where the point is illusion as much as flavor. Frozen bombes built in fruit-shaped tin molds were standard grand-restaurant work in the second half of the nineteenth century, and the trompe-l'oeil melon, complete with chocolate seeds, is the genre at its most literal. The French title pastèque flags the kitchen's language while the fruit itself was thoroughly American; watermelon was cheap and abundant in eastern markets by the 1890s. The instruction to read the syrup in degrees is a reminder that professional pastry work of the period could be measured with a saccharometer, though sugar-boiling stages were also judged by thermometer and by hand tests.