No. 3600

Turban with Pineapple or Strawberry or Sultana

Turban aux Ananas ou Fraises ou Sultane

Put one pint of apricot pulp in a vessel with two gills of almond milk (No. 4) and one gill of maraschino; add some syrup to bring the preparation to twenty-two degrees, then strain, freeze and mix with it the same quantity of whipped cream (No. 50). Place this preparation in a turban-shaped mold, pack in ice to freeze for one hour, then unmold and decorate around the center with some well-pared, ripe pineapple cut in four, and the hard center core suppressed; then cut up the remainder in slices, lay them it in a vessel and bestrew with sugar, pouring over some rum so that they macerate for half an hour.

Vanilla Strawberry Turban can be made by mixing in the same quantity of whipped cream (No. 50) after it is frozen; unmold and garnish the center with fresh strawberries macerated in kirsch, maraschino and a little powdered sugar. The turban can also be served plain or else trimmed with a sultana of spun sugar.

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For the Modern Kitchen

Ranhofer assumes a professional pastry station: a saccharometer, a salt-and-ice freezer, and cross-references to numbered base preparations. Translated into a home kitchen, this is an apricot-almond frozen mousse set in a ring mold, with macerated fruit heaped in the hollow.

The degrees are Baumé, not temperature"Bring the preparation to twenty-two degrees" means a sugar density of 22° Baumé, read on a syrup hydrometer — roughly 40 percent sugar by weight. This is the hinge of the recipe: too little sugar and the turban freezes to a solid brick, too much and it never sets firm enough to unmold. If you have no hydrometer, a refractometer reading near 40 Brix gets you to the same place.
GillsA gill is half a cup. Two gills of almond milk is one cup; one gill of maraschino is half a cup, which is a substantial pour of liqueur.
Almond milk means No. 4Ranhofer's almond milk is blanched almonds pounded with water and strained, far thicker and richer than carton almond milk, which is mostly water and will not carry the flavor or the body. Make an almond horchata-style infusion instead.
Apricot pulpA pint of pulp means ripe apricots cooked briefly and passed through a sieve, skins and stones discarded; expect to start with about 2 lb of fruit. Canned apricots in syrup, drained and sieved, are a fair substitute, but account for their added sugar before you take your density reading.
Alcohol and freezingHalf a cup of maraschino is a substantial amount of spirit for a mixture of this size. Alcohol depresses the freezing point, so increasing it risks leaving the turban too slack to unmold.
One hour is not enoughPacking a mold in ice and coarse salt can bring the temperature to around -6°F and sets it fast. A domestic freezer at 0°F needs at least four to six hours, and overnight is safer for a piece that has to hold its shape out of the mold.
The moldA turban mold is a fluted ring, essentially a savarin or Bundt form. Line it with plastic wrap if it is not seamless, and unmold by wrapping the outside in a cloth wrung out in hot water for a few seconds rather than dipping it, which softens the flutes.
Macerating the fruitHalf an hour in sugar and rum, or in kirsch and maraschino for the strawberry version, is enough to draw a syrup and no more. Longer and the pineapple turns translucent and the strawberries collapse.
Yield and serviceFolding in an equal quantity of whipped cream makes a sizeable piece, closer to two quarts than one and a half, enough for eight to ten. Assemble the fruit in the center at the table or immediately before it goes out; the syrup will melt channels into the ice within minutes.

A Little History

Charles Ranhofer ran the kitchens at Delmonico's in New York for roughly three decades, and The Epicurean (1894) is essentially that restaurant's working archive, numbered and cross-referenced like a technical manual. Molded ices of this kind were a standard close to a formal nineteenth-century dinner, and the mold often gave the dish its name: a turban mold produced a turban, a dome a bombe. The "sultana of spun sugar" in the title is a decorative cage or crown of pulled sugar set over or around the ice. The dependence on a Baumé hydrometer is a good marker of the period: sugar density was one of the few variables a confectioner could actually measure, and many of the ices and syrups in the book are specified by degrees — though this recipe also measures in pints and gills.