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Kentucky Cream
Make a half gallon rich boiled custard, sweeten to taste, add two table-spoons gelatine dissolved in a half cup cold milk; let the custard cool, put it in freezer, and as soon as it begins to freeze, add one pound raisins, one pint strawberry preserves, one quart whipped cream; stir and beat well like ice-cream. Blanched almonds or grated cocoa-nut are additions. Some prefer currants to raisins, and some also add citron chopped fine. - Mrs. Gov. J. B. McCreary, Kentucky.
This is a frozen custard in the older "tutti-frutti" mould — a rich cooked base loaded with dried and preserved fruit and churned. The quantities are for a household party, and the whole batch comes to about five quarts.
- Scale and yieldHalf a gallon of custard plus a quart of whipped cream, a pound of raisins and a pint of preserves comes to something over four quarts before churning, enough for a large party. A domestic ice cream machine holds 1.5 to 2 quarts, so plan on three or four batches or cut the recipe to a quarter.
- "Rich boiled custard"A stirred custard of cream or milk with egg yolks and sugar, cooked to 175-180F until it coats a spoon. It must not reach a simmer or it will scramble; strain it as soon as it thickens.
- The gelatineTwo tablespoons is heavy-handed by modern standards, and gelatine of the period varied in form and strength, so the original quantity is hard to translate exactly. One envelope (about 2¼ teaspoons) in a half gallon of base is plenty to keep the texture smooth; more will give a bouncy, gummy set once frozen hard.
- Freezer means the churn"Put it in freezer" is the hand-crank pail packed with ice and coarse salt, not a cabinet freezer. The fruit and whipped cream go in at the soft-serve stage, exactly as you would fold in mix-ins today.
- Plump the fruitRaisins and currants freeze to pebbles. Soak them in warm water, sherry or bourbon for half an hour and pat dry before adding, and chop the citron very fine for the same reason.
- Names that have shiftedCocoa-nut is coconut, best used unsweetened and grated fine here since the preserves already carry sugar. Citron is candied citron peel, sold at holiday baking counters. "Currants" in this list means the small dried grapes, not fresh red currants.
- SweetnessA pint of strawberry preserves adds a great deal of sugar, so sweeten the custard lightly and taste the combined mixture before churning. Too much sugar and the batch will never firm up properly.
- RipeningTransfer to a chilled container and hold at least four hours in the freezer before serving. The gelatine and the fruit both benefit from that rest, and the flavour of the preserves comes forward.
The contributor was the wife of James B. McCreary, governor of Kentucky from 1875 to 1879 — Buckeye Cookery, published in Minneapolis in 1877 and reissued through the 1880s, gathered recipes from clergymen's wives, editors' wives and politicians' wives, and a governor's name at the foot of a page was part of the book's appeal. The dish belongs to the family of frozen puddings — Nesselrode, tutti-frutti, biscuit glacé — that fashionable American tables served in the second half of the century, in which a custard base is loaded with dried fruit, nuts and preserves rather than flavoured with a single essence. Its Kentucky pedigree shows in the starting point: boiled custard is a long-standing holiday staple in the state, usually drunk from a cup and often laced with bourbon, and freezing it with fruit is a natural extension of that habit. The list of optional additions at the end — almonds, coconut, currants, citron — is typical of the period's recipe writing, which assumed a cook would adjust to what the pantry held.