No. 3650

Chocolate Fondants

Fondants au Chocolat

Dissolve four ounces of chocolate with two gills of water; add half a stick of vanilla and a pound and a half of sugar; continue to cook until it reaches "small ball" (No. 171), then pour it on a marble slab and leave to cool; work to obtain a fondant, proceeding the same as for No. 58. Put a part of this in a copper pan to melt, adding a spoonful of vanilla syrup, then cast this in the starch. As soon as the candies are firm and cold take them out and brush over; melt the remainder of the fondant, softening it with vanilla syrup, and dip the candies in this.

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For the Modern Kitchen

Ranhofer assumes a confectioner's bench: marble slab, starch trays, and a working knowledge of sugar stages. The quantities translate cleanly, but the technique needs unpacking.

Two gills of waterA gill is half a cup, so this is one cup of water to 1½ lb (24 oz) sugar and 4 oz chocolate. That is a fairly wet start by later fondant standards; the extra water at least gives the chocolate time to disperse before the syrup tightens.
The chocolateIn a nineteenth-century confectioner's kitchen 'chocolate' usually means unsweetened cacao mass rather than eating chocolate, though Ranhofer does not specify. 4 oz of 100% unsweetened baking chocolate is the safest reading; anything sweetened shifts the sugar ratio.
"Small ball"Ranhofer refers the reader to his own sugar-boiling table at No. 171. Small ball is generally reckoned at roughly 238–245°F (114–118°C) on a candy thermometer, at or just above the soft-ball point. Below it the fondant never sets; much above it and the mass turns short and crumbly when worked.
Working the fondantThis is the hinge of the whole recipe. The syrup must cool undisturbed to about 100–110°F before you begin working it with a scraper or spatula; agitating it while hot throws large sugar crystals and gives a grainy fondant instead of a smooth, opaque one. Once it turns white and stiff, knead it smooth and rest it, covered, for several hours or overnight.
Melting the fondantFondant should be warmed gently in a bowl over hot water and never taken past about 150°F (65°C). Overheated fondant loses its gloss and sets dull and streaky. The "copper pan" is simply a good conductor; a heavy stainless bowl does the same job.
Casting in starchThe moulds are impressions pressed into a tray of dry cornstarch that has been sifted and oven-dried. Warm liquid fondant is poured into the impressions, left overnight to firm, then lifted out and brushed clean — that is what "brush over" means. A soft pastry brush is the right tool.
Vanilla syrupNot a modern flavoured coffee syrup. Steep a split vanilla bean in a simple syrup of equal weights sugar and water, and use it a spoonful at a time to thin the fondant to dipping consistency.
Half a stick of vanillaHalf a vanilla bean, split, simmered in the syrup and removed before working. Roughly ¾ teaspoon of extract stirred in after the syrup cools is a workable substitute, though it will not carry the same depth.
YieldRanhofer gives no yield. The sugar and chocolate alone come to 1¾ lb before any water retained in the cooked fondant, and part of that total is melted down as dipping coating rather than cast as centres.

A Little History

Fondant — from the French fondre, to melt — is sugar deliberately crystallised very fine, and it was the backbone of the nineteenth-century confectioner's trade: the centre of a bonbon, the coating of a petit four, the icing on an éclair. Charles Ranhofer, chef at Delmonico's in New York for over thirty years, published The Epicurean in 1894 as a complete professional reference, and its candy chapter reads like a working confectionery manual rather than a home cookbook, which is why it cross-references numbered sugar-boiling tables instead of describing the stages. Starch casting, the method here, remains the industrial technique behind cream-filled candies today; the trays of dried cornstarch let a shop turn out hundreds of identical centres without individual moulds. That chocolate appears as a fondant flavouring rather than as a coating is itself a detail worth noting.