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Tutti-Frutti Ice Cream
Prepare and finish a vanilla ice cream. Chop up very finely six candied cherries, two candied pears, two candied apricots, two candied prunes, two candied figs, one ounce angelica and four candied marrons; place all these in a bowl. Season with a tablespoon kirsch, one tablespoon rum and one tablespoon maraschino; mix well and let infuse for ten minutes. Then add to the vanilla ice cream. Mix well with a wooden spoon for two minutes. Carefully fill a quart brick ice-cream mould with the cream, cover both sides with lightly buttered paper, then cover it and bury the mould in broken ice and rock salt and let freeze for one hour. Remove the mould, immerse in tepid water for a few seconds, remove the cover and paper, unmould on a cold dish with a folded napkin and send to the table.
This is a classic bombe-style moulded ice cream: a finished vanilla base folded with liqueur-soaked candied fruit, then packed and ripened in a mould. Nearly all of the work is in the packing and the timing.
- The hinge: soak the fruit, but keep the alcohol modestThree tablespoons of spirits total is deliberate. Alcohol depresses the freezing point, so a heavier hand leaves the brick too soft to unmould cleanly.
- Fold cold into coldThe vanilla base should be freshly churned and still soft-serve texture, and the fruit should be chilled before it goes in. Two minutes with a wooden spoon is enough; longer melts the base and you lose air.
- Angelica and marronsAngelica is the candied stem of Angelica archangelica, sold in bright green strips and now hard to find outside baking suppliers. Marrons are candied chestnuts (marrons glacés; substitute a comparable weight of glacé chestnuts, or leave them out rather than replace them with something soft).
- Candied prunes and pearsWhole candied pears and apricots turn up around Christmas. Any firm candied fruit works, chopped fine — large pieces freeze into hard nuggets.
- The quart brick mouldA rectangular metal ice-cream mould with a lid. A metal loaf pan lined with parchment or a lidded metal terrine does the same job; press the mixture in firmly so there are no air pockets, which would collapse when unmoulded.
- Ice and rock salt, or the freezerThe salt-and-ice bath is a ripening step, not a churning one, and it works because brine sits well below 32F. A modern freezer at 0F will do the same job, though it will generally need longer than the hour specified here; do not skip the ripening or the brick will not slice.
- UnmouldingA few seconds in tepid water, no more, then invert onto a chilled dish. If it resists, return it to the water briefly rather than forcing it.
- YieldA quart brick serves six to eight in slices. Cut with a warmed knife and serve at once.
Tutti-frutti — Italian for "all fruits" — arrived in American and British confectionery in the nineteenth century as a name for anything studded with mixed candied fruit, from ice cream to chewing gum. This version is often associated with the French restaurant tradition that Filippini and his contemporaries are said to have brought to New York dining rooms: a moulded ice, packed into a brick, ripened in salt and ice, and turned out on a folded napkin. The trio of kirsch, rum and maraschino, and the reliance on candied cherries, angelica and marrons glacés, point to a well-stocked professional larder rather than a home pantry; before mechanical refrigeration, a kitchen that could produce a sliceable quart brick on demand was advertising both its ice supply and its labour.