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Marron Ice Cream
Prepare a vanilla ice cream. Finely chop two ounces candied marrons and add to the ice cream in the freezer with two tablespoons maraschino. Mix well and serve.
A three-line luxury finish written for a cook who already has a vanilla base going in a hand-crank freezer. Almost everything that matters is in the timing of the addition.
- MarronsThese are marrons glacés, whole chestnuts candied in sugar syrup and glazed, sold in Italian and French groceries around the holidays and online year-round. Chestnuts packed in syrup in a jar work as well and are cheaper; plain roasted or vacuum-packed chestnuts do not, as the sweetness is part of the point.
- MaraschinoThe clear, dry cherry liqueur distilled from marasca cherries, not the neon syrup from a jar of cocktail cherries. Luxardo is the usual bottle. If you have none, kirsch is the nearest substitute in spirit.
- "In the freezer"The freezer is the ice-cream churn, not the appliance. Fold the marrons and liqueur in when the custard has thickened to soft-serve and is nearly done churning, then give it only enough turns to distribute.
- Why the late additionAlcohol depresses the freezing point. Two tablespoons in a quart is small enough to soften the texture pleasantly; add it at the start and the mixture churns slowly and stays slack.
- Quantities impliedThe recipe gives no yield. Two ounces of marrons and two tablespoons of maraschino would suit roughly a quart of vanilla ice cream. Scale both together if your base is larger.
- ChoppingCandied chestnuts are sticky and crumble under a warm blade. Chill them first and cut with a lightly oiled knife into pieces about the size of a pea, so they stay distinct rather than dissolving into the cream.
- RipeningThe recipe says to serve at once. If you would rather firm it up, pack the finished ice cream into a chilled container and hold it in the freezer for two to three hours; the alcohol will keep it from setting bone-hard.
The International Cook Book came out of the professional dining rooms of the period, and this is a restaurant garnish rather than a household one: a plain vanilla base dressed at the last moment with two expensive imports. Marron is the French word for the large, single-kerneled chestnut prized for candying, and marrons glacés — chestnuts poached in graduated sugar syrups over several days, then glazed — are generally traced to the chestnut-growing districts of the Ardèche in France and Piedmont in Italy, where the confection became a commercial industry in the nineteenth century. Maraschino, distilled from marasca cherries and their crushed stones on the Dalmatian coast, was one of the standard bar liqueurs of the era and turns up constantly in the ice-cream and fruit chapters of American cookbooks between about 1880 and Prohibition. Pairing the two signalled expense: both had to be imported.