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Biscuits Glace a L'Orange
Crack six egg yolks in a copper basin, add two ounces granulated sugar, chopped rind and juice of a fresh orange, set basin on corner of range and briskly whisk while heating ten minutes; remove to a table, beat five minutes longer, then set basin on ice, and briskly stir with wooden spoon until thoroughly cold. Add half pint whipped cream, gently mix with skimmer one minute. With this preparation fill six paper ice cream boxes, neatly smooth surface with blade of a knife all around. Have a small freezer in an ice cream tub with broken ice and rock salt, place the cases in the freezer and let freeze for two hours, remove, place on a dish with a folded napkin and serve.
This is a frozen sabayon — no churning, no custard base beyond the yolks themselves. The whole thing stands or falls on how far you take the egg-and-sugar foam before the cream goes in.
- The hinge: cook the sabayon to the ribbonTen minutes of whisking over gentle heat is meant to thicken the yolks, not scramble them. A bain-marie is easier to control than "the corner of the range"; taking the foam to 160F/71C, when it holds a slow ribbon on the surface for a few seconds, also brings the yolks to a safe temperature. If it looks grainy at the edge it has gone too far.
- Copper basinA tinned or untinned copper zabaglione bowl conducts fast and evenly. A stainless bowl over simmering water does the same job with less risk of overheating; avoid aluminium, which can dull the colour of an egg foam.
- Two ounces of sugarWeight, not volume — about 55 g, a scant 1/4 cup plus a spoonful. For six yolks that is a restrained sweetness, which suits a frozen dessert, since cold mutes sugar.
- Chopped rindRead this as finely grated zest of one orange, coloured part only. Nothing here strains the rind out, so grated zest gives the same perfume without shards of peel freezing hard in the finished biscuit.
- Half pint whipped creamProbably half a pint of cream measured before whipping (US half-pint, 1 cup / 240 ml; an Imperial half-pint would be 10 fl oz / 284 ml), though the wording could as easily mean a half pint of cream already whipped. Whip to soft peaks only -- stiff cream will not fold into a sabayon without knocking the air out.
- SkimmerA flat perforated skimmer is what the recipe calls for. A large silicone spatula does it in the same handful of strokes; one minute is genuinely all the mixing this needs.
- Paper ice cream boxesSmall paper cases or boxes, roughly the capacity of a modern souffle ramekin or a large muffin case. Any straight-sided 4-6 oz cup works; the point is a flat, knife-smoothed top that reads as a neat block when served.
- Freezing without a churnThe ice-and-rock-salt tub is only a cold box here -- nothing is being dashered. A domestic freezer at 0F/-18C does the same in about three hours. Let the biscuits stand five minutes before serving.
- YieldSix individual moulds, as written. Serve on a napkin-lined dish as the original directs.
Biscuit glacé form more often met with in restaurant kitchens than in domestic ones: a bombe-type mixture with whipped cream, frozen still in small paper cases and cut or served in blocks, the name generally traced to the rectangular shape of a biscuit or bar rather than to anything baked. Preparations of this kind are older than is sometimes assumed, though they were firmly established in the repertoire codified in the great hotel kitchens, where a still-frozen preparation was prized because it could be moulded, held in the salt tub through service, and sent out looking identical every time. The orange version is one of the simplest flavourings in the family, and its appearance in an international cookbook of this period reflects how thoroughly French pastry vocabulary had colonised English-language menus.