No. 3629

Perrette's Basket

Le Panier de Perrette

Have some nougat made of chopped almonds (No. 3621); roll it out to a quarter of an inch in thickness and cut it into an oval nine by five inches. Have sixteen pieces of wire, each six inches long; cover all of them with a three-sixteenths of an inch layer of pulled and colored sugar (No. 3618); bend each one separately while the sugar is still hot, then fasten them around the nougat oval, an inch from the border; spread the wires outward on top. Make a rope of pulled white sugar, place it around the bottom of the basket; roll some more pulled sugar into quarter-inch diameter strings and braid it around the wires, finishing the top with another braid of pulled sugar. In the center fasten a sufficiently large handle, cover it with flowers and leaves made of pulled sugar and at one end tie a pretty satin ribbon bow three inches in width and of a color harmonizing with the basket. Put a nougat bottom inside the basket at two-thirds of its height, then fill up with chestnuts made of chestnut paste iced over with chocolate, or else ice cream in imitation of mushrooms, strawberries, etc.

← No. 3628 Baskets Filled with Candied Fruits, or Ice C Large Show Pieces No. 3630 Basket with Cherries →

For the Modern Kitchen

This is a sugar-work centerpiece rather than a dessert recipe: an almond nougat base, an armature of pulled sugar over wire, and an edible filling loaded in at the end. Ranhofer assumes you already have his nougat (No. 3621) and pulled sugar (No. 3618) at hand, so the numbers below are the ones he leaves out.

The hinge: work the sugar in one hot batchPulled sugar sets quickly and cannot easily be re-bent once it has cooled and hardened at the surface. Keep the mass warm under a heat lamp or in a low oven and pull, coil and braid a few pieces at a time; anything that has gone brittle goes back to the pot rather than into the basket.
Sugar temperaturesPulled sugar for ribbons and flowers is cooked to hard crack, 310-320F, with an acid or glucose interfering agent so it stays plastic. The almond nougat base (a nougat sec) is caramelized sugar poured over toasted chopped almonds and rolled hot; it must be cut to the nine-by-five oval while still warm, because cold nougat shatters.
Isomalt is the modern substituteProfessional showpieces are now built in isomalt, which is far less hygroscopic than sucrose and holds its gloss for days. It is cooked to roughly 340F and handled the same way. Note that isomalt is a sugar alcohol and eating a piece of decoration in quantity has a laxative effect.
The sixteen wires are structure, not foodThey are the ribs of the basket and stay embedded in the sugar. Use stainless steel florist's wire, keep it out of contact with anything to be eaten, and tell whoever dismantles the piece that it is there. The satin ribbon is decoration and comes off before serving.
Humidity will destroy itSugar work draws water from the air and turns tacky, then cloudy. Assemble in the driest room available, glue joints with a dab of hot sugar rather than water, and store the finished basket in a closed box with silica gel until it goes on the table.
The fillingThe interior nougat shelf set at two-thirds height, which Ranhofer specifies without explanation, lets the basket be filled shallowly and still look full. Chestnut paste is a sweetened puree of cooked chestnuts, rolled into nut shapes and dipped in tempered chocolate; if you use the ice-cream option, mold and freeze the mushrooms and strawberries hard and load them at the last minute, since meltwater dissolves sugar work on contact.

A Little History

The name points to Perrette, the milkmaid of La Fontaine's fable La Laitière et le Pot au lait, who walks to market calculating the eggs, chickens and calf her milk money will buy and spills the lot. Charles Ranhofer, chef at Delmonico's, placed it among the large show pieces at the back of The Epicurean (1894), the section of nougat temples, sugar baskets and spun-sugar fountains that a large restaurant kept in its repertoire for banquets and balls. These pieces descend from the pièces montées of Antonin Carême, who in the early 1800s built architectural confections from nougat, pastillage and pulled sugar and is generally credited with making them the centerpiece of formal French service. By Ranhofer's day the showpiece was less an edible course than a display of the kitchen's technical range — which is why the instructions dwell on wire lengths and ribbon widths and dispose of the actual eating in a single closing line.