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Charlotte a La Chateaubriand
"Charlotte a la Chateaubriand" is one of the grand triumphs of the French cook's skill. In this case the mould of an anglefood or lady fingers is not filled with whipped cream, but with a very dainty ice cream, garnished with candied fruit. To make a large mould of this dainty dessert, scald a pint of cream, add the beaten yolks of four eggs and half cupful of sugar. Stir in a double boiler over the fire until the custard thickens. Then strain it, add two tablespoonfuls of Maraschino and half a gill of milk of almonds prepared as follows: Blanch four Jordan almonds, pound them to a paste with two tablespoonfuls of cold milk. Add two tablespoonfuls of cream when they have been brought to a paste, and strain the whole through a sieve, pressing through all but the dry meat of the almonds. Freeze the custard for about five minutes until it becomes thickened; then add a cupful of whipped cream and finish the freezing. Then add a quarter of a pound of candied cherries, each cut in half, and a quarter of a pound of apricots, green gages, and pears mixed and cut in small and very thin slices. These candied fruits should have been soaked in a little Maraschino for at least twelve hours. Pack the cream after adding the candied cream in a smooth mould that will just fit in the charlotte-russe mould, which is to be lined with cake. A plain quart mould will be suitable for the purpose. It must be covered tightly. Line the mould selected with strips of angel food, or lady-fingers at the sides after first covering the bottom with little circles of cake overlapping each other. Pour into the interstices and around the edges of the cakes a soft icing made by mixing the white of an egg with a cup of powdered sugar, three drops of lemon juice. This icing cements the cake together and fills up any interstices. Let the icing become hard before filling the cake. Just before the filling is added spread a thin layer of apricot jam on inside of the cake, then turn the frozen cream into the center of the mould. Turn out the charlottte on a low crystal platter. Decorate it with a wreath of whipped cream, dotted with candied fruit, and heap a little whipped cream over the top. This charlotte is also very nice filled with a plain chocolate ice cream and garnished on the outside with pistachio nuts and whipped cream.
A bombe of maraschino ice cream set inside a cake-lined mould, written for a kitchen with a hand-crank freezer and a stocked confectioner's shelf. The assembly, not the custard, is where it succeeds or fails.
- Build the shell firstLine and ice the cake mould, then let the icing set hard before any frozen cream goes near it. If the shell is still tacky the cake slumps and the whole charlotte collapses when turned out.
- Half a gillA gill is half a cup, so half a gill of almond milk is 2 fl oz (1/4 cup). The two tablespoons of cold milk plus two of cream in the almond paste roughly account for it once the solids are pressed out.
- Jordan almondsHere this means the large sweet almonds of the Spanish Jordan type, not the candy-coated sugared almonds sold today. Blanched whole almonds pounded with milk give the same result; four of them flavour the custard very lightly.
- MaraschinoThe liqueur distilled from marasca cherries, not the syrup from a jar of bright red cocktail cherries. It is what the recipe means both in the custard and in the twelve-hour soak for the candied fruit.
- Custard temperatureStir the cream and yolks in the double boiler until it coats a spoon, around 170-175F. Past that the yolks curdle, and straining will not fully rescue the texture.
- Freezing"Freeze about five minutes until thickened" describes a salt-and-ice crank freezer. In a modern churn, run the chilled custard until it is the consistency of soft-serve, fold in the whipped cream and finish churning briefly, then stir in the fruit last, as the recipe directs.
- Green gagesGreengages are a small green plum, candied here alongside apricot and pear. Any mixed candied fruit works, cut very thin so the slices do not freeze into hard chips.
- The raw-egg icingThe cementing icing is uncooked white of egg beaten with powdered sugar. If that is a concern for the table you are serving, use pasteurized whites; the quantity is small but it is never heated.
- Yield and serviceA quart mould gives about eight portions. Pack it tightly, cover, and freeze several hours until solid; dip the mould a few seconds in warm water to turn it out, then decorate and serve at once.
Grand-restaurant cookery of the nineteenth century named its dishes after patrons and public figures, and Chateaubriand honours François-René de Chateaubriand, the writer and diplomat of the Napoleonic era; the beefsteak cut bearing his name is traditionally credited to his cook Montmireil, and the label was later attached to any number of unrelated preparations, sweet ones included. The charlotte itself is older, a moulded dessert of bread or cake around a filling, with the cold, ladyfinger-lined charlotte russe generally traced to Antonin Carême. What this version shows is a cookbook reaching for the prestige of a French kitchen: the ice cream is bombe work, the maraschino and candied greengages are confectioner's goods, and the whole thing depends on an ice-and-salt freezer and a household with time to soak fruit overnight.