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Almond Cream Ice
Blanch and pound two ounces of sweet almonds with a tea-spoonful of rose-water and a little loaf sugar; add gradually a quart of cream, and boil gently for a few minutes. Let it cool slowly, and place it in the ice-pail. Serve with sponge-cakes. Time to freeze, about half an hour. Probable cost, 3s. 6d., with cream at 1s. 6d. per pint.
A plain almond custard-less ice: cream, almonds, rose-water and sugar, frozen by hand. The sugar quantity is left to the cook, which matters more here than anything else.
- The sugar is unmeasured"A little loaf sugar" is only the sugar used to help grind the almonds; there is no measured sweetening for a quart of cream. Sugar is also what keeps an ice scoopable, so reckon on 5-6 oz (about ¾ cup) total for the full quart, dissolved while the cream heats.
- Loaf sugarSugar sold in a hard cone, broken and crushed for use. Ordinary granulated or caster sugar is the direct replacement; the crushed loaf sugar in the mortar acted as an abrasive to keep the almonds from turning to oily paste.
- Quart of creamAn imperial quart is 40 fl oz, about 5 cups — a fifth more than a US quart. Victorian "cream" was not a standardised product and was often nearer today's single or light cream than heavy; a mix of half heavy cream and half whole milk gives a nearer texture and freezes better.
- Pounding the almondsTwo ounces of blanched almonds in a mortar is slow work. A food processor with the sugar and rose-water does it in a minute, but strain the boiled cream through fine muslin afterwards unless you want a gritty ice.
- Rose-waterRose-water strength varied then as it does now, and some modern bottlings are considerably more concentrated. Start with half a teaspoon of a good food-grade rose water and taste the cold mixture, since freezing mutes aroma and over-perfumed ices taste soapy.
- Boil gently, brieflyCream held at a boil will catch on the pan and taste scalded, which no amount of freezing hides. Bring it just to a simmer, hold two or three minutes to draw out the almond flavour, then cool.
- Chill before churning"Let it cool slowly" is not enough for a modern machine. Refrigerate the strained mixture overnight; a cold base churns faster and finer.
- The ice-pailA pewter or tin mould set in a wooden pail packed with crushed ice and coarse salt, scraped and beaten by hand with a spaddle. An ice-cream maker gives the same half hour of freezing with a smoother result; without one, freeze in a shallow tray and beat thoroughly every 30 minutes.
- YieldRoughly 1¼ quarts of finished ice, serving eight to ten in the small portions of the period. Sponge fingers or a plain sponge cake are still the right accompaniment.
Almond and rose-water together are among the oldest sweet flavourings in English cookery, inherited from medieval almond-milk dishes and still standard in Victorian creams, blancmanges and ices long after vanilla became available. The costing line suggests a late-nineteenth-century household dictionary: cream at 1s 6d a pint made a single quart-sized ice a 3s 6d proposition, real money in a period when ice itself was a bought commodity, cut from Norwegian lakes or American ponds and sold from ice wells. Books of this kind assumed their readers had an ice-pail and a supply of rough ice and salt — equipment that put frozen desserts within reach of the comfortable middle class rather than only the great houses, and which explains why books of this era give freezing times as confidently as baking times.