No. 47

Pistachio or Hazel-Nut Cream

Creme aux Pistaches ou aux Noisettes

Place eight egg-yolks in a bowl with one pound of sugar, beat well together and dilute with a pint of boiling milk; thicken this cream on the fire without allowing it to boil and as soon as it is cooked, take it off and add half a pound of pistachios pounded with orange flower water, vegetal green and kirsch, or else half a pound of roasted hazel-nuts pounded with a little water and maraschino. Incorporate some cream into either of these when nearly cold; also a pound of very good, fresh, unsalted butter; allow to cool.

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For the Modern Kitchen

A stirred custard enriched with nut paste and butter — what a modern pastry kitchen would call a crème mousseline, used to fill gâteaux, choux and vacherins rather than eaten as a dessert on its own. The quantities are professional; halve or quarter them for home use.

The hinge: cook to 180F, no further"Thicken this cream on the fire without allowing it to boil" means a stirred custard finished at about 180F (82C) on an instant-read thermometer, when it coats the back of a spoon. Past that the yolks curdle and no amount of beating will bring the texture back.
Vegetal greenGreen vegetable colouring — in Ranhofer's day usually vert d'épinards, spinach leaves pounded, pressed and the juice set over gentle heat so the green coagulates and can be skimmed off. A drop or two of modern green colouring does the same job; pistachios alone give a dull khaki.
PistachiosBlanch shelled unsalted pistachios in boiling water for a minute and rub off the skins, or the paste turns brownish. Pound with orange flower water and kirsch to a smooth paste, or use a food processor; commercial pistachio paste can stand in, but check whether it is already sweetened.
MaraschinoA clear, dry cherry-pit liqueur, not the syrup from a jar of cocktail cherries. Luxardo is the usual bottling; brandy or a good kirsch is a fair substitute in the hazelnut version.
"Some cream" is unspecifiedThe original gives no quantity for the cream folded in when the custard is nearly cold. Treat it as loosening liquid — a few tablespoons of heavy cream at a time, worked in until the paste is smooth enough to take the butter.
Butter temperatureA pound of butter beaten into a warm custard will melt and separate; into a cold one it will stay in lumps. Both should sit at about 68F (20C), and the butter goes in gradually with steady beating. If it splits, warm the outside of the bowl briefly and keep beating.
SweetnessA pound of sugar to eight yolks and a pint of milk is very sweet by current taste; a cream this rich would likely have been spread thin between layers rather than eaten in quantity. Reducing the sugar by a third gives a filling closer to a modern buttercream without harming the set.
Yield and keepingThe listed quantities come to something close to four pounds of finished cream, enough to fill and mask two large cakes. Refrigerate, and bring back to room temperature and re-beat before using, or it spreads like cold butter.

A Little History

The Epicurean (1894) is Charles Ranhofer's record of some thirty years as chef at Delmonico's in New York, and this entry sits in the Elementary Methods — the section of building blocks a kitchen brigade was expected to have on hand rather than a dish in itself. The pairing of pistachio with orange flower water and kirsch is straight out of the French repertoire Ranhofer trained in, and correcting the colour of pistachio creams with spinach green was common in professional pastry work well into the twentieth century. The two alternatives in one entry show a single method flavoured two ways.