Glace Dame-Jeanne

Glace Dame-Jeanne (a vanilla ice-cream shell filled with orange-blossom pralin Chantilly) teaches the essential grammar of a moulded ice: the outside must freeze evenly, while the centre stays light enough to soften on the tongue. The one truth to know before touching the pan is this: the pralin must be completely cold and fine enough to pass through a sieve before it meets the cream. One coarse caramel pebble will announce itself in every spoonful.

The original formula assumed a pâtisserie station with vanilla ice cream already made, a deep freezing cabinet, and a large narrow scallop-shell Madeleine-mould. It also sends the cook to Another Method of Preparing Aspics de Filets de Soles (No. 916) for the technique called clothing the mould. No sole or jelly enters the dessert, naturally; the reference supplies the method of coating a cold mould evenly before it is filled. At home, dense purchased vanilla ice cream replaces a separate brigade production, and one 1-litre shell or pudding mould replaces the specialist form. That is scaffolding. The even vanilla shell and the Chantilly combined with Pralined orange flowers are the dish, and they stay exactly where the source puts them.

The entry gives no proportions, so these quantities have been set for one cook and a six-person table: enough vanilla ice cream to clothe and seal the mould, with enough Chantilly to fill it without leftovers. When cut, the pale vanilla shell should hold a softer ivory centre, finely freckled with orange-flower pralin. Sieve that pralin patiently. Everything depends upon it.