Wood Pigeon in a Rare Fowl ‘Fricase' circa 1684

One of the first posts I did on this blog was about Pumpion Pye  from Robert May’s 1684 cookbook, The Accomplisht Cook.  Nearly a year later, as Lost Past Remembered approaches its first birthday, it seems a good time to revisit Mr. May.  Elizabeth David called his book “a most beautiful piece of cookery literature”.  Alan Davidson (who compiled the Oxford Companion to Food) said in his introduction to a new edition of May’s book:  “It is the most comprehensive panorama of cookery in upper-class English households of its time”.

I knew food Historian Ken Albala was a great May fan. When I told him I was attempting to make a modern version of a rather complicated May dish, he enjoined me to do it right and not to dumb-down the recipe or balk at the ingredients… ok, one ingredient… lamb’s stones.  For the uninitiated, they are lamb testicles and not easy to come by.  I was told by Catskill Merino  at Union Square, NYC (who supplied them for me with some difficulty), that they are tossed out as waste by most slaughterhouses.  What a pity.  The great chef/author Anissa Helou gushed about them on her blog and explained how to prepare them.  You know what, they are spectacular with a creamy texture not unlike sweetbreads. I am so glad that I heeded Ken’s sage advice and obtained them (and Petunia, my Saint Bernard, is crazy about the left-overs!) and made the recipe as close to the original as I could.

And what of Robert May?  His life is laid out quite thoroughly in the introduction to  The accomplisht cook - or, The art & mystery of cookery --  written when May was in his 70’s (he may have lived into his 90’s—his date of death is a little vague):

“He was born in the year of our Lord 1588. His Father being one of the ablest Cooks in his time, and his first Tutor in the knowledge and practice of Cookery; under whom having attained to some perfection in this Art, the old Lady Dormer sent him over into France, where he continued five years, being in the Family of a noble Peer, and first President of Paris; where he gained not only the French Tongue but also bettered his Knowledge in his Cookery, and returning again into England, was bound an Apprentice in London to Mr. Arthur Hollinsworth in Newgate Market, one of the ablest Work-men in London, Cook to the Grocers Hall and Star Chamber. His Apprentiship being out, the Lady Dormer sent for him to be her Cook under Father (who then served that Honourable Lady) where were four Cooks more, such Noble Houses were then kept, the glory of that, and the shame of this present Age; then were those Golden Days wherein were practised the Triumphs and Trophies of Cookery; then was Hospitality esteemed, Neighbourhood preserved, the Poor cherished, and God honoured; then was Religion less talkt on, and more practised; then was Atheism & Schism less in fashion: then did men strive to be good, rather then to seem so. Here he continued till the Lady Dormer died, and then went again to London, and served the Lord Castlehaven, after that the Lord Lumley, that great lover and knower of Art, who wanted no knowledge in the discerning this mystery; next the Lord Montague in Sussex; and at the beginning of these wars, the Countess of Kent, then Mr. Nevel of Crissen Temple in Essex, whose Ancestors the Smiths (of whom he is descended) were the greatest maintainers of Hospitality in all those parts; nor doth the present M. Nevel degenerate from their laudable examples. Divers other Persons of like esteem and quality hath he served; as the Lord Rivers, Mr. John Ashburnam of the Bed-Chambers, Dr. Steed in Kent, Sir Thomas Stiles of Drury Lane in London, Sir Marmaduke Constable in York-shire, Sir Charles Lucas; and lastly the Right Honourable the Lady Englefield, where he now liveth.”

Coudray House Kitchen

The Dormers were great patrons, humanitarians and food lovers and May owes his career to their generosity, sending him as they did to Paris and London to broaden his horizons.   May practiced his art in kitchens like the one at Coudray House in Sussex (where he cooked beginning in 1630).  But I think his intended audience would not be his employers -- rather his professional peers.

In his preface, May acknowledged this when this he gave his reasons for writing the book: “TO you first, most worthy Artists, I acknowledg one of the chief Motives that made me to adventure this Volume to your Censures, hath been to testifie my gratitude to your experienced Society; nor could I omit to direct it to you, as it hath been my ambition, that you should be sensible of my Proficiency of Endeavours in this Art. To all honest well intending Men of our Profession, or others, this Book cannot but be acceptable, as it plainly and profitably discovers the Mystery of the whole Art; for which, though I may be envied by some that only value their private Interests above Posterity, and the publick good, yet God and my own Conscience would not permit me to bury these my Experiences with my Silver Hairs in the Grave: and that more especially, as the advantages of my Education hath raised me above the Ambitions of others, in the converse I have had with other Nations, who in this Art fall short of what I have known experimented by you my worthy Country men.”

He believed, because of the good fortune of his erudition and experience, that he had an extraordinarily rich and diverse body of work and was honor bound to share it with others so that it would not die with him.

May wrote The Accomplisht Cook or the Art & Mystery of Cooking during the Restoration. Although his cooking had roots in the English past, it was also nurtured by the cuisines of at least 3 other countries – French, Spanish and Italian (he could read in 4 languages—quite remarkable for the time). Additionally, we moderns tend to forget that through the apprentice system of the time, you could learn from someone with a direct line to recipes and techniques and stories from kitchens of the Middle Ages.  Apprenticing in 2 countries was rare.  

May drew from all of these influences as well as fresh new ones, like La Varenne’s (1615-78) 1651 cookbook, Le Cuisinier François (the first French cookbook translated into English in 1653).  He even pinched a few recipes from La Varenne and others (scholar Marcus Bell felt 8% of the recipes were ‘borrowed’ -- somewhat forgivable given the breadth of the book).   Whatever the provenance of the recipes, the vision was singular and thoroughly May’s own.

 Accomplisht Cook, 1685

The dish that caught my eye and fancy was A Rare Fricase.   Something about the unusual combination of ingredients and his reputation made me want to see what it would be like.  In this dish, May’s use of spice was muted – with only nutmeg, mace and pepper being used and not a whole battery of exotics as had been the fashion when May began cooking.  May danced to his own,  aristocratic tune. This sauce with orange and egg has a little of the feeling of hollandaise, and it is wickedly good… he was an artist.

Wood Pigeon

I was looking forward to working with pigeon after having pigeon breast in a fabulous salad in a Glastonbury, UK gastro-pub, Who’d A Thought It this summer.

As always, when I need to find something wild and wonderful, I go to D’Artagnan … in this case they had a wild Scottish Wood pigeon. Coursing through heather and Scottish forests gives it terroir on the hoof (or claw as may be).  It has the taste of place that gives it an amazing depth and flavor that a farmed bird doesn’t have. It is dark and dusky, more like venison than a bird. For my ‘peeper” I used D’Artagnan’s poussin that are only a little bigger than a chick at 3 weeks, delicate and succulent.  It’s an ebony/ivory combination.

I believe the formula would be great with Cornish hens if you can’t get the pigeon and poussin—but it’s easy to get them sent by mail from D’Artagnan. If finding ‘stones’ are a problem I understand that Middle Eastern butchers often carry them, so if you live in a large metropolitan area you may be able to find them. If you can’t, stick with sweetbreads and oysters as the fried garnishes.  Bone the pigeon as much as possible (the whole bird is the size of a baseball and the bones are very tiny - nearly like fish bones), leaving just the leg and wing attached… the breast of the pigeon is best medium-rare, over-cooking makes it ‘liverish’.  The sauce is creamy but not too thick and redolent of orange and warm spices… really lovely. 

Cooking in Europe 1650-1850

You can try carving your orange if you wish to be authentic.  Should you make the original with 12 birds, the carved fruit would be in the center of the platter with gold leaf, “gooseberries, cockscombs, ratafia biscuits, comfits and lemon slices”, says Ken Albala.  Although there are a few steps and unusual ingredients, it really isn’t that difficult to make and the result is so satisfying… a real taste of history!

A Rare Fricase, based on Robert May’s 1684 recipe Serves 2

1 Scottish wood pigeon

1 poussin  

½ c white wine

3 T cognac

1 c water

2 T salt

6T butter

1/3 pound sweetbreads, parboiled peeled and cubed* (Mine are from Grazin Angus Acres)

1 lamb testicle, peeled (there are 2 layers to peel, btw), parboiled and cubed (from Catskill Merino)

6 oysters

½ c flour

6 asparagus, sliced in half and parboiled

Marrow from 1 marrowbone, uncooked

2 T pistachios

1 c stock (lamb, beef or chicken)**

1/3 c white wine

¼ t nutmeg

Salt & pepper

¼ t mace

1 clove garlic

2 egg yolks, raw

¼ c verjus*** or wine vinegar

juice of 1orange

1 small orange, sliced or carved

1 carrot sliced decoratively for garnish

2 T sliced almonds

4 rounds of toast

Slice the birds in half.  Remove most of the bones from the pigeon and poussin leaving the leg and wing. Marinate the pigeon and the poussin in wine, water, cognac and salt for a few hours or overnight.  Remove from the brine and pat dry.  Sauté the birds in 3 T butter (a cast iron skillet works well for this) to brown over medium high heat, turn.  Cook the pigeon another 2-3 minutes over a medium flame and remove, let the chicken cook 4 more minutes then run them under a broiler, skin side up to brown for a few moments, then remove and tent (the poussin may require a little more time than the pigeon).

Flour the sweetbreads (reserve 1/3 for the sauce) oysters and lamb stones and season with salt and pepper.

Sauté the marrow, remove what remains, then add 3 T butter and the sweetbreads and oysters and lamb stone, fry till crisp and remove Set aside and keep warm.   

Sauté reserved sweetbread and pistachios.

Add stock to the pan you cooked the birds in with nutmeg, pepper, garlic, white wine, mace and let the flavors mingle.

Add egg yolks to verjus, blend, add to stock and heat gently.

When thickened, add orange juice and toss in the asparagus to warm.

Place rounds of toast on plates then place the birds on the toasts and add the oysters and sweetbreads.

Arrange the orange (sliced or carved), asparagus, pistachios and almonds about the birds.

Pour the sauce over the birds.

*How to cook sweetbreads 

** I took the trimmings from the pigeon and poussin and combined them with a 1½ cups of stock and ½ a Portobello mushroom (sans gills) and cooked it for 2 hours on a very low heat then strained out the solids.

*** I did a whole post about verjus HERE . Although I love my recipe for it because it is richer and more complex… you can get the more conventional version easily online HERE,.   

 Thanks to Gollum for hosting Foodie Friday

Soul Cakes and Charles Addams for All Hallows Eve

I fell in love with Chas Addams books the first time I saw them in a bookstore. I was 8. This might be considered odd since the original cartoons came from the sophisticated pages of The New Yorker and were decidedly not for children but I loved them and my dear mother indulged me. Because of these books, I was never afraid of the dark, never ridiculed people who were ‘different’ and developed a very active imagination.

Halloween was THE holiday for Charles Addams. His best cartoons always took center stage on the front cover of The New Yorker’s Halloween-week edition.

Cemetery in the Snow 1817

What’s not to love about Halloween? The universal archetype exists across many centuries, religions and cultures. It marks the seasonal death and transfiguration of lush, ripe fields and the resplendent flame of fall leaves to barren stubble and naked spidery limbs.

In England, the Christian tradition came from the pagan celebration of Samhain (from the old Irish meaning summer’s end) where fires were lit to protect against the creeping dark and the waning of the sun god’s power but also to light the way for the dead to visit the earth. It was believed, in these days between the light and dark halves of the year, the membrane between the living and the dead was at its thinnest –– thin enough that the dead could reach out to the living.

Gozan no okuribi

At the Irish court of Tara in the Middle Ages, a colossal blazing fire was lit to celebrate Samhain and to serve as a beacon for the departed. I remember watching a similar ceremony in Kyoto, Japan called Gozan no Okuribi (meaning send-off fire) better known as the ceremony of The Lighting of the Daimonji (meaning large or great) –- an extraordinary torchlight procession by hundreds of participants climbing up Kyoto’s mountains and creating giant fiery characters to lead the dead that had returned to visit the week before during O-bon (where they snacked on their favorite foods that their loved ones had left at their graves) back to the spirit world  –– it was astonishing.

Golden cakes came into the Celtic tradition as a way to share the sun and perhaps to warm and nourish departed souls on their passage back to the spirit world.

Christianity absorbed the Celtic festival on the last day of October and first days of November and transformed them to All Hallows Eve, All Souls and All Saints Days while retaining some Samhain traditions -- albeit with new meanings attached. 

A Party of Mummers

The golden cakes became ‘soul cakes’ and were given to traveling beggars or entertainers called Mummers who were given a treat in exchange for praying for a soul. Some would sing:

“Soul, a soul, a soul cake,
Please good missus a soul cake.
An apple, a pear, a plum, a cherry,

Any good thing to make us all merry,

One for Peter, two for Paul, three for Him who made us all.”

I decided this was what I wanted to make for my Halloween treat. In searching for a recipe, I came upon a lovely one from Goode Cookery based on a 1604 recipe from Elinor Fettiplace's personal cookbook (that I wrote about HERE) called Elinor Fettiplace's Receipt Book: Elizabethan Country House Cooking:

I made a few alterations to Gode Cookery’s interpretation, changing the proportions (after I checked with other recipes of the period that had amounts listed) and adding more butter to the mix (1 T of butter wasn’t enough).  I include the cross variety and the currant ‘face'.  Although not in the original recipe, rose sugar is a lovely addition.  Note the rose scent dissipates once you leave the cookies out so plan your sprinkling accordingly.  In the old days, they were sprinkled then put back into the oven for a moment so that the sugar “will shew like ice”. They are delicious with cider.

Soul Cakes based on a recipe from Elinor Fettiplace

1/2 cup ale

1 tsp. yeast

2 ½ - 3  cups flour

1/2 cup sugar

1/4 tsp. each nutmeg, clove, & mace (taste the dough, you may want more)

1/2 tsp. saffron

¼ c currants, soaked in warm water or sherry for 1 hour (optional)

6 T sweet butter, softened

½ t salt

1/2 cup dry sherry (sack)

1 egg yolk mixed with 1 T water

2 T Demerara Sugar from Marx Foods (optional)

a few drops of Aftelier Rose essence or Rosewater (optional)

Dissolve the yeast in the ale (this makes the "ale barme" of the original recipe); set aside.

In a large bowl, combine the flour and sugar (start with 2 ½ and add the rest if needed. Make a well (a depression, or hollow area in the center of the dry ingredients) in the flour/sugar mixture and pour in the “ale barme”. Leave these ingredients unmixed so that the ale barme may proof.

In a separate bowl, cream the butter and the spices. Warm the sherry (you can use some of the sherry from plumping the currants) and let the saffron steep for a few minutes.

In the large bowl, cover the ale barm with some of the flour/sugar mixture, then add the creamed butter, spices, & sack, and with a large spoon, begin gently blending until the mixture resembles coarse, wet sand. Finish the blending process with your hands, kneading in the bowl until it forms a ball of dough. The finished product needs to be smooth & elastic, and soft but not sticky. Add more flour if the dough is too wet; add more sack if too dry.  You can add all the currants to the dough and just make crosses or leave a few tablespoons out of the dough and make your ‘faces’ or skip the currants entirely.

Roll this dough out onto a floured surface till about 1/4-1/3” thick.  Use a lightly floured cutter to make the cakes. (The earliest references to Soul Cakes describe them as flat & oval—I have seen them round as well). Place on a baking sheet lined with parchment paper. Let them rest for 5-10 minutes in a warm spot (if you want them puffier, let them rise, covered, for 1 hour). 

Bake at 375º F for 15 minutes. Remove and brush with egg yolk and return to oven for 10-15 more minutes until cooked through.  Remove from oven and when still hot, sprinkle a little Demerara sugar on the top of each cake (you can toss the sugar with the rose 1^st, if you would like -- as it would have been done in the 16^th century).  Let cool on a wire rack; serve. Makes approx. 2 dozen small cakes.  They have a texture somewhere between a pizza crust and an animal cracker.

From The Closet of Kenhelm Digby of 1669 (he was the father of the modern wine bottle):

The Bialy and Pletzel

Have you ever heard of a bialy (or pletzel for that matter)???  Everyone knows bagels, but bialys… not so much (aside from Mel Brooks hanging the name on his naughty Max Bialystock in the Producers) and that is a crying shame.  The bialy is the ‘other’ NYC roll -- flatter but with attitude since it’s got a savory onion poppy-seed filling that is just too delicious for words.  The bialy has such a great back-story that Mimi Sheraton wrote an entire book about it called The Bialy Eaters. For 8 years (1975-83) Mimi Sheraton was the food critic for the NY Times and if anyone knows NYC food, this is the lady.

Mimi Sheraton

The book is a great read, and opens with a sage observation: “few aspects of life inspire such persistent nostalgia as the foods of one’s childhood, reminders of the joyful security of home and family.”  This nostalgia (could it be saudade?) was acknowledged by the Chinese poet-statesman, Lin Yutang, when he wrote “What is patriotism but the longing for the foods of one’s homeland.”  The book covers the history of the bialy or bialystok kucken from their birth in the Jewish Quarter of the small Polish town of Bialystok (decimated by WWII) to the lower east side of NYC where they became a favorite in NY delicatessens (always eclipsed by the more popular bagel). This may have been because they have a very short shelf life and must be eaten or frozen within 6 hours of baking (old timers would pass up rolls that were less than an hour old for those just out of the oven).  They are easy to make however and a minute (or less) in the microwave and they are thawed and ready to toast for a perfect breakfast.

Sheraton actually went to Poland to separate fact from legend.  Bialys were hard to track down even with rock-hard samples brought from NYC, but many people had small glimmers of recognition and a 1939 film showed local children eating them… they were from Bialystok!

Although they may have been related to the Polish tsibele pletzel  (the sheet version is called an “onion board” in America and the name of the Jewish ghetto in Paris— with a texture like crisped pizza), it had none of the earmarks of the flatbread save the onion poppy seed topping.

The extra dusting of the dough with flour may have had something to do with the name since bialy means white in Slavic languages and the coat of arms of Poland is the Orzel Bialy or white eagle (chosen by Lech, the founder of Poland) so white is a popular appellation in Poland… but that is pushing it.  I think it’s just named for the place that invented it. 

The bialy is soft and chewy when fresh.  Delicious split, toasted and shmeared with butter or cream cheese and/or stuffed with smoked salmon (from Russ & Daughters if you can manage it), it is a rough tough little guy from the old neighborhood that makes the well-upholstered bagel seem so… bourgeois.  Pletzels were a huge hit in my household. Try bialys and pletzels for your next NY style brunch, oy, you’ll thank me!

  Jewish Quarter in Bialystok, Poland in the 20’s.

Bialys (based on Mimi Sheraton’s Bialy’s with a little help from Kossar’s Bialys in NYC) 
Makes 12 - 3 ½ to 4” bialys

1 ½ to 2 Lbs (5-6 cups) bread flour

3 cups cold water

2 T kosher salt

1 package yeast

Topping

1 m onion, finely chopped (do not process)

2 T coarse toasted breadcrumbs

salt to taste

2 t oil
3 T poppy seeds

Mix the crumbs into the onion and set aside for a few hours till there is no liquid… add more crumbs if this doesn’t happen.  Add the salt and oil and the poppy seeds.  Some people sauté the onion first… your call.

Put the yeast in a bowl with ½ c of the water and blend, then add the rest of the water.  Put the flour and salt in a mixer and blend for 8 minutes… it should be sticky.  Put in a clean bowl and allow it to rise till double in volume 3 to 3 ½ hours.   Then knead the dough with a dough hook for 10 minutes and by hand 5 – 10 minutes.  Allow it to rise for 1½ hours till it springs back when touched lightly (I let mine rise overnight).

Preheat oven to 450º with pizza stone or sheet pan upside down. Make 4 ropes of dough and cut each into 3 rounds.  Make a circle out of these and make an impression using your thumbs… make the bottom thin, if it isn’t it will blow up and you will lose the filling.   Sprinkle the filling on each bialy and put them on the preheated baking surface.  I put mine on parchment and slid them on the baking sheet on the parchment… if well floured on the bottom you can just use a spatula to move them.

Bake for 15 – 20 minutes.  Cook and freeze or eat.

Pletzel

The recipe for the Pletzel, comes from George Greenstein's Secrets of a Jewish Baker: Recipes for 125 Breads from Around the World

Topping:

3/4 cup yellow onions, chopped
1-2 tsp. poppy seeds (more to sprinkle on pletzel
1-2 tsp. olive or canola oil
salt to taste (about 3/4 tsp.)

Mix all topping ingredients in a bowl and set aside.  Some people like to sauté the onions in oil before putting them on the top… the French like them soft and cooked and sliced in rings or half rings

Dough:
1 1/2 T. dry yeast
1/4 cup warm water
3/4 cup ice water
2 large eggs
4 cups bread flour
2 1/4 tsp. salt
2 T. canola oil
2 T. sugar
2 T. malt syrup

Sprinkle the yeast over the warm water, stir. Add remaining ingredients and mix until dough forms a ball in the mixer. Add additional flour if needed. Knead for 5 minutes in a mixer. Let the dough rest for 15-30 minutes.

Oil two large cookie sheets. Divide dough in two, and roll as thin as possible, letting dough rest if it is hard to roll. Place dough on the cookie sheets. Brush with canola oil. Stipple all over with a fork, spread with onion topping, sprinkle with additional poppy seeds, and bake at 400° (with a pan of water for steam in the oven) for 20-30 minutes until brown. The texture will be somewhere between pizza and a cracker.  It is addictive!  You could also put some whole wheat in them if you want them a little healthier.  I might add, since they do not raise really, I am not sure why all that yeast is needed.... see what you think.

Thanks to Gollum for hosting Foodie Friday

The Penny Lick and Pomegranate Rose Ice Cream

Happy accidents often occur to Antique browsers like myself.  Whilst looking for something else, a new item will cross my path and bid me to bid and learn more about it.

Penny Lick Glasses

 One such item was the penny lick glass.  Fascinated by its Ebay description,  I discovered they came in 3 sizes: the halfpenny lick, the penny lick, and the two-penny lick, with the Penny lick being the most popular. In an article from The Victoria & Albert Museum of Childhood (a very cool museum) on Edwardian Lives they wrote:  “The ice cream still often came as a 'Penny Lick'… a tiny portion to be licked out of a small serving glass which was (at best) wiped between customers. This was recognized as being notoriously unhygienic even then, and because of the thickness of the glass, often gave the customer disappointingly less than it appeared to. Then from the vendor's point of view the glasses were also liable to break or be stolen. No wonder that edible ice cream cones were such a success.” 

A pastry alternative to the Penny lick glass (penny licks were banned in London in 1899) was patented by Italo Marciony in New York in 1903, but this was a cup and not a cone. Many sources said the ice cream cone was invented by Syrian pastry makers based on the grid-patterned zalabia  (usually soaked in an orange-flower honey syrup) around the turn of the century at an American World's Fair… myth has it an ice cream vendor ran out of containers.  There are many who claim to have been the first to invent it but there are no clear winners for that title. To make it even more confusing, the field is very murky indeed with a difference between the restaurant or homemade cone with a long history and the street vender cone that appeared at the turn of the 20^th century.

On the Historic Food website, Robin Weir (who has spent years trying to get to the bottom of all things ice cream) said that Mrs. Marshall mentions an edible cone or cornet made with almonds that were “filled with any cream or water ice or set custard or fruits” in her 1888 Mrs A.B. Marshall’s Cookery Book.

Charles Elme Francatelli (Queen Victoria’s chef) in The Modern Cook: A Practical Guide to the Culinary Art in All Its Branches had a recipe for ice cream stuffed almond gauffres or cornets (very much like the tuilles of today) in 1859 in a dish called Pudding, A La Cerito: “cornets or cornucopia, each being filled with a little of the vanilla-cream ice and a strawberry placed on the top…” although these were part of a larger confection, the recipe for the gauffres mentions ‘garnishing’ the cornets with vanilla cream-ice.

Frascati's Restaurant 1807

A few years earlier, Weir has an engraving of Frascati’s restaurant in Paris from 1807 that he believes shows a woman with an ice cream cone… who can say?  His book,  Frozen Desserts: The Definitive Guide to Making Ice Creams, Ices, Sorbets, Gelati, and Other Frozen Delights is a killer.

Robin Weir also mentions that cornets have been made since at least 1776 when they are mentioned in The Professed Cook  by Bernard Clermont (this is an amazing book, btw, and  I learned ice cream as we know it was still called  iced cheese or fromage glacé in 1776) but there was no instruction to use the gaufrettes for ice cream that I could find in the book.

What's Cooking in America says there were paper and metal cones in France, England and Germany in the 19^th Century and my favorite Charles Ranhofer was using "rolled waffle cornets" at Delmonicos in New York in the 19^th century!

It does appear that the cone came before the glass, doesn’t it? These are, however,  restaurants and cookbooks by professional chefs and not  street vendors. The glasses were only around for 50 years or so at best… the cone, well at least a few years before the glass!

I got my little penny lick glass from England (although they were made in the US) but think it may be a two-penny, since it has a deeper bowl than many I’ve seen. It is a little under 3” tall, so quite small but still heavy.  When I made my orange ice cream flowers I was inspired by a Taste of Beirut post to combine pomegranate and rose for an ice cream flavor and thought it would be perfect for my penny lick glass.

The pomegranate juice came from the lovely people at POM Wonderful  who sent me a box of 8 oz bottles.  The first I used for one of my favorite guilty pleasures, brown buttered popcorn washed down with pomegranate juice, it’s just insanely good and arrived at purely by accident so many years ago (salty popcorn, nothing to drink but pomegranate juice = heaven).  Three of my bottles went into the ice cream.  It is sweet and tangy and terribly delicious… I can imagine it with brown-butter salted almonds or shortbread cookies.  Although delicious, it is a muddy color on its own (all those lovely eggs took the red out!) so I did add a bit of red food coloring to give it the rosy glow that it deserved.  Grass-fed cow’s milk and pasture-raised eggs make all the difference in taste and are better for you, the animals, the farmer and the planet, FYI!

May I recommend a use for your rosy ice cream?  Try a Pomegranate Champagne Float.

It’s a float for grown-ups and very very tasty.

Pomegranate-Rose Ice Cream

3 c POM Wonderful pomegranate juice

1 ½ c milk (milk and cream from Milk Thistle Farm)

1 ½ c cream

½ c sugar

1 t vanilla

4 egg yolks (mine come from Grazin Angus Acres)

2 T maple syrup

juice of ½ lime

1-2 T Pama pomegranate liqueur (optional)

a few drops of red food coloring

2-3 drops Aftelier Rose essence (or 2 T rosewater)

Reduce 2 ½ c pomegranate juice to 1 c.  Toss in the remaining pomegranate juice and reserve. 

Combine yolks and sugar and whip together till a lemon yellow.  Warm the milk and cream and add to the yolk and sugar mixture, blend and return to the pan.  Bring slowly to 170º (about 5 minutes) stirring all the time. Remove from heat and strain.

Add the pomegranate, vanilla, maple syrup and limejuice.  Add rose to taste.  Chill and freeze in an ice cream maker.

Pomegranate-Rose Champagne Float, for 1

1 scoop pomegranate rose ice cream

1 glass sparkling wine (I used the Donati Malvesia)

Put a scoop of ice cream in a glass and pour the wine over it.  Serve with a spoon

 Get rose essence here: Aftelier Products