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Iced Pudding, Fontainebleau
Prepare a quart of coffee ice cream. Press quarter pound candied marrons through a sieve into the coffee ice cream, add also three slices candied pineapple cut in quarter-inch pieces, six candied marrons cut in quarters, and two tablespoons good Jamaica rum. Mix thoroughly with spatula. Line a dome-shaped quart mould with a sheet of white paper, then fill up with the coffee preparation. Tightly cover and bury it in tub with plenty of ice and rock salt to freeze one hour. Remove, wipe all around, unmould it on a cold dish with a folded napkin over, lift up the paper. Arrange twelve large, fresh, well-picked strawberries around the pudding and serve.
This is a bombe — ice cream packed into a mould and hardened in an ice-and-salt bath. Everything hinges on the base being soft enough to fold in the fruit but not so soft that it melts and refreezes grainy.
- Candied marronsMarrons glacés, whole chestnuts candied in syrup, sold in tins and jars at Italian and French grocers around the holidays. The quarter pound pressed through a sieve is there to make a purée; a food processor does it faster, and unsweetened chestnut purée plus a spoonful of sugar is an acceptable substitute for that portion.
- QuantitiesA quart of ice cream is about 950 ml — two US pints of a good coffee ice cream, or a churned custard base if you are making your own. Three slices of candied pineapple is roughly 3 oz.
- Work fast and coldSoften the ice cream in the refrigerator, not on the counter, until it will just take a spatula. Fold in the purée, fruit and rum quickly and get it into the mould before it slumps; a fully melted base refreezes coarse and icy.
- The rum is a limit, not a suggestionThe rum is modest for a reason -- alcohol depresses the freezing point, so pouring in appreciably more than the two tablespoons specified will give a softer pudding that holds the shape of the mould less well.
- Freezing without an ice tubThe ice-and-rock-salt bath is a brine cold enough to set the pudding in the hour the recipe allows. A domestic freezer at 0F (-18C) will do the same work, but allow several hours or overnight. Cover the mould tightly either way -- pressed film against the surface, then the lid -- to keep out freezer smell and ice crystals.
- Lining the mouldThe sheet of white paper is for release. Plastic wrap or a round of parchment in the base works better and creases less; leave an overhang to pull on.
- UnmouldingDip the mould in warm water for five seconds, wipe it dry, invert onto a chilled plate and lift the paper away. The folded napkin under the pudding is period service; a chilled platter is enough.
- YieldA quart mould serves six to eight, cut in wedges. Return it to the freezer if the strawberries take you more than a minute to arrange.
Iced puddings of this kind " a bombe moulded in a dome, unmoulded at table, named for a place rather than its contents " belong to the grand-hotel repertoire that French chefs carried into American dining rooms in the late nineteenth century. The name Fontainebleau points at the château southeast of Paris, but no connection between the place and the marrons is documented; candied chestnuts are more usually associated with other regions altogether. Recipes were routinely christened after towns, royal residences and singers, so the label usually signals a defining ingredient or simply a compliment rather than any documented local dish. The freezing method here is the older one: before mechanical refrigeration reached the kitchen, a sealed mould buried in crushed ice and rock salt was the way to harden a pudding, and cookbooks of the period assumed a tub of ice as a matter of course.