On Desserts and Bills of Fare
Ingredients
Directions
Make the ice basket
Pour water into a copper or tin mold and place it over rough ice mixed with salt.
Leave it to freeze for a few hours until solid.
Freeze a layer of clear water.
Add an inch of water colored with cochineal and freeze again.
Repeat until the mold is filled with colored layers.
Introduce fresh flowers and green leaves into the mold before freezing for decoration.
Once frozen, turn out the mold to create a beautiful basket.
Serve
Place the basket over a folded napkin and fill it with fruit-shaped ices.
Ensure not to overfill the dishes.
Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.
Explore the science
What each ingredient does
- Water
- Freezes into the clear, solid body of the basket that holds the decoration.
- Cochineal (for coloring)
- Adds red color to the layers, making the frozen basket visually striking.
- Fresh flowers
- Provide decoration embedded within the frozen layers.
- Green leaves
- Provide decoration embedded within the frozen layers.
- Ices (in fruit shapes)
- Serve as the filling placed inside the finished basket.
The step that matters
Freezing each layer before adding the next. Each layer must freeze solid before the next is poured, otherwise the layers mix and the colored bands and embedded flowers lose their definition.
“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.
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