The empress of ice cream

Carlo

To make a sorbet of pears: take twelve pears, peeled and sliced, so ripe that the slices^slip around in your hands. Make a pulp, and sieve it fine; simmer with the juice of one lemon and a cup of sugar, then freeze, stirring in the usual way. If you add creme anglaise you will have a cream ice instead of a sorbetto.

The Book of Ices

After the episode with Louise I shut myself away for a few days. For some reason I felt myself a Little consumed by that obstinate dullness of the soul which physicians call melancholy.

I spent the time busying myself with the long-overdue task of making an ice for the English visitor. I had neglected this process appalhngly. It was said that the English delegation would be leaving within the week: the king might demand to judge the contest at any moment.

Listlessly, I began to assemble ingredients. What was required? Something showy, obviously: something which demonstrated my mastery of my art, and the splendour of the Erench court.

The corridors of Versailles were decorated with elaborate paintings: every candelabra was held aloft by golden cherubs. I began to carve a cherub out of ice, holding up a frozen platter on which I would place - what? A horn of plenty, perhaps: a cornucopia, dispensing fruits. During my time at the court I had already made wooden moulds which allowed me to construct ices in the shapes of cherries, pears and apples. Now I added a musk melon, a perfectly pink peach, and a bunch of golden, translucent grapes, dusted with powdered bakers’ sugar to represent the fine pale

bloom of a vine. The whole thing was garlanded with vine leaves made of biscuit and sugar-work.

When it was done I looked at it, and I hated it.

It was magnificent and meaningless - a platter of pointless pomp, an exercise in empty display and grandiloquence that I could have done in my sleep. Even Audiger could have done it.

I heard Louise de Keroualle’s voice in my head. A frivolous, pleasure-seeking libertine who spends his time doin^ nothing more worthwhile than producinpi titbits for greedy courtiers . . .

It was not true, and I would prove it.

Picking up the cherub and its platter, I dashed it to the floor. Ice shattered around my feet; imitation fruits rolled to the furthest extremes of my pantry. Those within reach I stamped on with my boots, crushing them, and kicked the pieces away. Then I began to pace up and down.

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I spent a whole day and a night thinking, reaching for ingredients only to put them away again. I knew what I did not want to make; but as to what I did want, that was rather harder.

I looked over at my blocks of ice. How beautiful they are. No, I thought: they are not beautiful, they are implacable. They will forgive nothing.

What was the simplest, the most ridiculously straightforward ice I could make to please the king?

Pears. Louis loved pears.

So - I would make a pear ice. But this would be the best pear ice I, or anyone else, had ever made.

I used only Rousselet de Reims, the king’s favourite variety, perfecdy ripe that month. Lirst I roasted them whole with a litde thyme and some sweet wine, very gently, to sweeten the flesh. Then I pureed them with the zest of a lemon and a small amount of verjuice.

I added some salt, too. Salt, lemon, verjuice - these were addidons which would be unnoticeable in the finished ice, but which

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I knew would magnify the pears’ flavour when it burst off the spoon and into the mouth. I had my sorbet - or at least, the beginnings of it.

Then, in a moment of inspiration, I added some creme an 0 lciise.

I was thinking initially only of how I could make it more English, of course. But as soon as I tasted it I realised that the smooth, warm richness of the custard, flecked with specks of black vanilla, was the perfect accompaniment to the fragrant sharpness of the fruit.

I stepped back, amazed. I saw immediately what I had done: I had created a combination^ an alliance of flavours, in which the whole was greater than the sum of its parts. Together, the French pear and the English custard were one dish, better than either on its own. Frozen together in a kind of cream ice, they would symboUse the special relationship between the two countries, united in one indivisible whole. And - best of all - it was simple; so simple that even a fool like myself could not fail to grasp the message.

Impatiently, I waited for the mixture to freeze, stirring it every half hour as usual. Each time I took the lid off the sahotiere^ and worked the paddle around the sides of the pewter bucket, I noticed how fine and pale the flakes of frozen cream ice were. And they felt different, too. Instead of the grainy, sandy feel of crushed ice, there was only a smooth, luxurious firmness, as if I were stirring a rich, heavy paste.

Finally, it was done. In my impatience I did not even put it into a bowl, but tried some straight from the bucket.

It was extraordinary. Not just the taste, but the texture. Somehow, I had made an ice so thick, so creamy and so soft it was as if a macaroon was dissolving in my mouth. No granules of ice, no graininess: just the oily, smooth shpperiness of cream coating my tongue as it melted, leaving the sweet sharpness of pear and the warm richness of creme nn^lnise.

At last I had made an ice such as Ahmad could only dream of

The only thing perplexing me was that I could not, immediately.

see what I had done to make this ice so different. No matter: that could be sorted at a later time. For now, I just wanted to try my ice out on someone. It needed a worthy setting, of course: I had been keeping back a goblet of priceless Venetian glass, encrusted with flecks of gold, for just such an occasion. I reached for it - then hesitated. Once again, the key to making this special was'simplicity, not extravagance.

I made two little coronets, royal crowns, out of brandy-snap, and filled each one with my pear-and-cream ice.

Then I carried it outside. At first, there seemed to be no one about. But from the gardens I heard the sound of murmuring courtiers. Perhaps, I thought, Louis might even be with them.

Hurrying towards the source, I rounded a hedge. I was in luck: there was the king.

‘Your Majesty,’ I cried.

As I advanced towards Louis I became aware that people were turning to look at me. The murmuring died away. Too late I realised that, today, all their finery - their hats and canes and frock coats, and even the plumes in their hats - were black, as black as sloes. Someone had died. But who.>

It was too late to stop, too late to go back, but my footsteps slowed. And then the king himself turned around, his eyes hollow, and took in the sight of me coming towards him, ibearing a dish with an ice on it. ,

‘Your Majesty,’ I called again, and bowed. ‘I have made your ice, and it is wonderful.’

The king had taken a step back, and the courtiers on either side of me were shrinking back too. ‘Ice!’ I heard someone say. And there was the doctor again, the idiot who had warned the king that eating ices might be dangerous. He was speaking urgently to one of the footmen, pointing to me as he did so.

‘Would Your Majesty not like to taste a litde.>’ I said, puzzled. And then two sergeants-at-arms had hurried forward, and I found myself being led away.

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