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Biscuit Glace
Carefully crack six egg yolks in a small copper basin, add two ounces granulated sugar and half a stick vanilla. Set the basin on the corner of the range and with the whisk beat all well together for ten minutes. Remove the basin from the range to a table, take up the vanilla bean, beat up for five minutes more; then set the basin on the ice and stir with a wooden spoon until thoroughly cold. Add two gills cream whipped. Gently mix with a skimmer for one minute. Fill up six paper ice-cream biscuit cases and neatly smooth with the blade of a knife all around. Have a small freezer in an ice-cream tub with broken ice mixed with rock salt. Arrange the cases in the freezer and freeze for two hours. Remove, place on a dish with a folded napkin and serve.
This is a still-frozen dessert built on a warm yolk foam, closer to a semifreddo than to churned ice cream. The whole thing succeeds or fails on how you handle the yolks over heat.
- The hinge: gentle, indirect heat"The corner of the range" means the coolest part of a coal stove top — moderate, diffused warmth, not a burner. Use a stainless bowl over barely simmering water and whisk constantly; the mixture should thicken to a pale ribbon and reach about 160F/71C, which also pasteurizes the yolks. Direct heat will scramble them in seconds.
- Copper basinAn unlined copper bowl was standard professional equipment. Copper conducts heat quickly and evenly, which is an advantage for a foam warmed on the stovetop, but a stainless or heatproof glass bowl over barely simmering water will do the job.
- Gills and ouncesA gill is half a cup, so two gills of cream is one cup, measured before whipping. Two ounces of granulated sugar is a weight — roughly 4 1/2 tablespoons, or 57 g.
- Half a stick vanillaHalf a vanilla bean, split, steeped in the warm yolks and lifted out before the final beating. A teaspoon of good extract stirred in after the mixture is cold is a fair substitute; do not add extract while the bowl is hot.
- SkimmerThe recipe folds the cream in with a flat perforated skimmer. A large rubber spatula does the same job: cut down through the whipped cream and turn it over, stopping while a few streaks remain rather than working it smooth.
- Paper biscuit casesSmall paper cases of the kind bought ready-made for iced desserts; the recipe assumes they can simply be had. Straight-sided ramekins, small paper cups or a small loaf tin lined with parchment all serve; fill level and smooth the tops as directed.
- Ice and rock saltA salted ice bath drops to around 10F/-12C, which is why two hours sufficed. A home freezer at 0F does the work unattended, though it will want three to four hours, and there is no churning to schedule since the whipped cream supplies all the aeration.
- Yield and servingSix small cases, a rich portion each, sent to table on a dish with a folded napkin as the recipe directs. Let them stand two or three minutes before serving so the texture softens from hard to velvety.
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