Home › The World's Kitchen › Iced Pudding, Romanoff
Iced Pudding, Romanoff
Prepare a pint only of marron ice cream, adding twelve cracked and finely chopped walnuts, one ounce chopped candied citron, two tablespoons maraschino, a half pint whipped cream and mix well with the spatula. Line a quart mould with a sheet of white paper, then fill with the preparation, line with a piece of paper on the surface, cover and bury it in the ice with rock salt for two hours. Remove, wipe well all around, unmould on a dish with a folded napkin and serve.
A moulded bombe of the old hotel kitchens: a stiff ice-cream mixture packed into a lined mould and hardened in a salt-and-ice bath rather than frozen from scratch. The whole thing hinges on the base ice cream already being frozen and firm when you start folding.
- Marron ice creamMarron is chestnut. This means a chestnut ice cream, usually built on sweetened chestnut puree (crème de marrons) or chopped marrons glacés in a custard base. Either buy a chestnut ice cream or fold chestnut puree into a good vanilla one.
- Work fast and coldYou are folding whipped cream and liqueur into already-frozen ice cream. Chill the bowl, mould and spatula, soften the ice cream only to the point where it will take a fold, and get it into the mould before it slumps. A soupy mixture will separate as it refreezes.
- MaraschinoTwo tablespoons of maraschino liqueur, not the syrup from a jar of bright red cherries. Luxardo or similar is the intended article; alcohol slows freezing, which is why the quantity is small.
- Candied citronAn ounce is about 2 tablespoons chopped. Citron peel is still sold around the winter holidays; candied orange peel is the nearest substitute if it is out of season.
- Quart mould, pint of ice creamA pint of ice cream plus a half pint of whipped cream plus the additions comes to something under a quart, so the mould is not filled to the brim. A metal bombe mould, charlotte tin or loaf pan all work; metal conducts the cold far better than ceramic.
- The ice and salt bath, or the freezerBurying the covered mould in crushed ice mixed with rock salt drops the bath well below freezing and hardens the pudding in the two hours the recipe allows. A home freezer will do the same job, though the time will depend on the freezer.
- UnmouldingWipe the salt off thoroughly before opening, or brine will run into the pudding. Dip the mould in warm water for a few seconds, invert onto the cold dish, and peel the paper away. It is served on a folded napkin, as the recipe directs.
- YieldA quart mould serves six to eight in the thin slices this sort of pudding is meant to be cut into.
Iced puddings of this kind u2014ice cream fortified with nuts, candied fruit and liqueur, packed in a mould and frozen solid u2014were the standard grand finish in the French-trained hotel and restaurant kitchens of Europe and America in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, when a menu was expected to end with something moulded and turned out whole. The name Romanoff attaches to the Russian imperial house and belongs to a long list of dishes christened after royal or fashionable patrons; such attributions are conventional rather than documented, and rarely record an actual connection to the person named. The chestnut base points to the same source, since marrons glacés and sweetened chestnut puree were fashionable luxury goods traded out of France and Italy. Freezing before mechanical refrigeration meant natural ice packed with rock salt, and the recipe calls for a paper lining and a sealed lid without saying what either is for u2014a paper lining may help keep brine out, though it also helps release the mould.