No. 3633

Chariot of Doves

Le Chariot des Colombes

The body of the chariot is made and molded of white nougat (No. 3622) in a plaster mold, divided in two, well garnished with shellac and oiled; the border of the shell is made of almond paste (No. 125) and gum tragacanth cut out in a design; the wheels are of nougat or pulled sugar (No. 3618), the spokes, the ring and the axle cut out separately and fastened together with cooked sugar; the nails are imitated with royal icing (No. 101); the shafts are made of wire covered with nougat or pulled sugar. Stand the chariot on an oval stand of pistachio nougat (No. 3622) the size of the bottom of the dish intended for serving. Place a false nougat bottom inside the chariot, then fill it up with candied fruits iced over with caramel and angelica. This chariot can also be made of gum paste (No. 3624) and filled with candied fruits or fruits and flowers of all descriptions made in ice cream or water ice.

← No. 3632 Chariot Filled with Lady Apples Large Show Pieces No. 3634 Chariot of Swans →

For the Modern Kitchen Do not make this as written.

This is an assembly plan for a sugar showpiece rather than a recipe in the usual sense: Ranhofer assumes you already have his nougat, pulled sugar, almond paste and royal icing at hand and are only being told how to put them together. Almost everything that can go wrong is a matter of humidity and temperature.

Work dry, and fastThis is the hinge. Nougat and pulled sugar draw water out of the air and go sticky, then slump; a humid kitchen will defeat the whole piece. Work in the driest room you have, keep finished parts in a sealed box with silica gel or quicklime, and assemble only when every component is ready.
The plaster moldThe recipe calls for a two-part plaster mold sealed with shellac and then oiled, one way of shaping hot nougat to a curved form. Food-grade shellac (confectioner's glaze) is still sold, but a modern equivalent is a silicone or polycarbonate mold, lightly oiled; unsealed plaster will bond to the sugar and shed grit.
Nougat here is not candy nougatRanhofer's nougat (No. 3622) is a moldable almond-and-sugar nougat rather than the soft chewy sweet; it is worked warm and pliable and sets brittle, so shaping has to be done quickly. Pistachio nougat for the stand is the same preparation with pistachios, and the recipe also calls for a white version.
Gum tragacanth and gum pasteTragacanth stiffens almond paste so it can be cut into fretwork that holds its edge. It is still sold as a powder, and modern gum paste (pastillage) made with tylose or CMC does the same job with more reliability. Gum paste pieces are technically edible but are meant to be looked at.
Royal icing as glue and rivetPiped royal icing supplies the imitation nailheads and can hold joints that cooked sugar has not caught. The recipe specifies only 'cooked sugar' as cement, with no temperature; in practice it needs to be hot enough to weld without melting the part it touches. Warming the mating surface is easier than flooding it.
Inedible partsThe wire shafts and the false nougat bottom inside the chariot are structural. The false bottom exists so a shallow layer of candied fruit reads as a full load; note for anyone serving that the wire must be removed before the piece is broken up.
Angelica and candied fruitCandied angelica stems, used for their green color, have become hard to find outside specialist confectioners; candied citron, orange peel and glacé cherries are the easy substitutes. "Iced over with caramel" means brushed or dipped in clear caramel for gloss, which will not hold in damp air for more than a few hours.
Scale and serviceNo size is given because the piece is built to the platter. Ranhofer's instruction to make the pistachio nougat stand the size of the bottom of the serving dish is the only dimension given. As a buffet centerpiece it feeds as many as the fruit inside allows; the chariot itself is display.

A Little History

Charles Ranhofer put out The Epicurean in 1894 after decades as chef at Delmonico's in New York, and its final chapters are given over to grosses pièces — architectural sugar constructions that stood on the buffet through a long dinner and were dismantled, if at all, only at dessert. The tradition is generally traced to Antonin Carême, who treated pastillage and pulled sugar as building materials and published plans for pavilions, ruins and temples; by Ranhofer's day the vocabulary had settled into a repertoire of recurring conceits, and this chariot sits in the book between one filled with lady apples and another drawn by swans. The doves and the chariot are Venus's, a classical joke a Gilded Age dining room was expected to catch. What the entry really documents is a kitchen with a dedicated confectioner and a shelf of numbered base preparations, so that a showpiece could be described in a single paragraph of cross-references.