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Fresh Cherry Coupes
Pick off stems and carefully stone a pint fresh, ripe, sweet cherries; place in a bowl with two ounces sugar, two tablespoons kirsch and one tablespoon curacao, turn well in seasoning and keep on ice until required. Prepare a pint only of vanilla ice cream. Evenly divide the cherries and liquor into six champagne glasses, then fill up with the vanilla ice cream, neatly smooth the surface, arrange a maraschino or candied cherry on top of each and serve.
A macerated-cherry sundae built in stemmed glasses, and it depends almost entirely on giving the fruit enough time in the liquor before assembly. Everything else is assembly work.
- The hinge: macerate properlyGive the cherries a good while chilled in the sugar and spirits, an hour or more if you can, so the sugar draws out juice and the fruit takes on the kirsch. Assembled straight away, the liquor is thin and spirituous rather than syrupy.
- A pint of cherriesMeasured by volume, that is about 2 cups of whole cherries, roughly 12 oz / 350 g before pitting, yielding around a cup and a half of stoned fruit. Weigh if you prefer; the ratio is forgiving.
- Two ounces sugarWeight, not fluid ounces: about 57 g, a little over 1/4 cup. Sweet ripe cherries may want less, and sour cherries a good deal more.
- Kirsch and curacaoKirsch is the dry, unsweetened cherry eau-de-vie of Alsace, the Black Forest and Switzerland, not a sweet cherry liqueur; substituting a sweetened one throws the sugar off. Curacao is an orange liqueur, sold now as triple sec or as dry curacao.
- "Keep on ice"That meant the icebox. Cover the bowl and refrigerate; do not sit the cherries in melting ice water.
- Coupe glassesThe dish takes its name from the coupe, the stemmed glass or dish such ices were served in; this recipe calls for champagne glasses. Any small stemmed glass or a wide dessert dish works, and six is the yield the recipe gives.
- Ice cream textureA pint of ice cream across six glasses is about 1/3 cup each, so it is meant to cap the fruit rather than fill the glass. Let it stand a few minutes to soften enough to smooth the surface, then serve immediately or the whole thing slumps.
- AlcoholThe spirits are never cooked off, so this is not a dessert for children or anyone avoiding alcohol. Cherries macerated in sugar with a little lemon juice give the same effect without it.
Coupe is the French word for a cup or bowl, applied to the serving vessel, and by the late nineteenth century it had become the name of a whole family of restaurant ices served in one: coupe Jacques, coupe Saint-Jacques, coupe aux marrons. Filippini's International Cook Book collects the repertoire of the grand hotel and club dining rooms, where a coupe was the neat, quick, expensive-looking finish to a menu. It required a kitchen with an ice cave, a case of good liqueurs and a supply of fresh fruit out of season. Kirsch with cherries is the standard pairing of the period, on the same logic that puts framboise with raspberries, and the maraschino cherry on top was then a genuine Dalmatian marasca cherry preserved in maraschino liqueur rather than the dyed, brine-cured confection that later took over the name in America.