Ice puddings and ice cream were very popular in the eighteenth century, but saw their heyday in Victorian times. The moulded ice puddings were one of the most technically challenging dishes for a cook to make. Variously shaped copper and pewter ice-cream moulds were produced to look like domes, beehives, flowers, fruit, vegetables, swans, peacocks and other animals.
Other elaborately shaped and presented iced puddings were made, too. The cover design of the book The Royal Confectioner (1891) by Queen Victoria’s chef de cuisine, Charles Elmé Francatelli, showed a spectacular iced pudding named after the queen. The pudding sat on a comport moulded out of ice in the form of two entwined dolphins, a mould of which he also had in an advertisement in the back of his book. The ice itself was made in a melon mould with ‘Plombières ice cream’ to which ‘diavolini’ – ginger comfits, dried apricots and dried cherries – were added. The ‘Plombières ice cream’ was made with bitter and sweet almonds; orange flower water and apricot jam. Then the finished puddings were sprinkled with shaved almonds and chopped pistachios to look like a real melon. The top and base of the pudding was garnished with ‘small fancy fruit-shaped water ices’, which were also a popular treat.
