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Bohemian Ice Cream
The smaller varieties of ripe red fruit are used to make this cream; they are pulped through a fine sieve, and to a pint of the juice thus procured is added an ounce and a half of the best isinglass, dissolved in half a pint of water. Sweeten to taste, and squeeze in lemon-juice if liked. Mix to this quantity a pint of sweetened whipped cream, and mould for freezing. These creams, where raspberries only are used, may be put into glasses, and made without isinglass--in the proportions of a pint of fruit juice to a pint of whipped cream. Time to freeze, about thirty minutes.
A fruit fool set with fish gelatine and frozen in a mould — closer to a semifreddo than to churned ice cream. Two decisions matter: how much gelling agent you use, and whether you freeze it hard or leave it soft.
- Isinglass, and what to use insteadIsinglass is clarified collagen from the swim bladders of sturgeon and other fish; it is now sold mainly to brewers and is not a practical kitchen ingredient. Powdered gelatine does the same job, but at roughly a third to a half the weight, so the ounce and a half here would translate to about 1/2 oz (two standard 7 g sachets) for a pint of juice — and even that gives a firm set.
- The pint is imperialCassell's was a London book: a pint is 20 fl oz, not 16. Scaling the recipe with US cups gives you a fifth less liquid to the same amount of gelatine, and a rubbery result.
- Bloom the gelatine, do not boil itSoften it in the cold half-pint of water, warm gently to dissolve, then let it cool to barely tepid before it meets the fruit and cream. Poured in hot it will cook the cream flat and streak the mixture with set threads.
- Fold the cream in last, off the heatWhip to soft peaks only. Overwhipped cream folded into an acidic, gelatine-laden purée turns grainy, and it cannot be rescued once it is in the mould.
- "Mould for freezing"The original assumes a metal mould packed in cracked ice and coarse salt, which freezes without churning. A loaf tin or bombe mould in a modern freezer will do the same job; expect several hours rather than the thirty minutes quoted, which reflects the far faster chill of an ice-and-salt pack.
- The raspberry version is the better oneThe raspberry version -- Without isinglass this is simply equal parts sweetened purée and whipped cream, frozen in glasses rather than turned out. It is lighter and tastes more of fruit; the isinglass is there so the cream can be unmoulded whole.
- Sweeten above what tastes right coldBoth the juice and the cream are sweetened separately here for good reason — freezing mutes sugar and acid alike. Season the mixture slightly sweeter and slightly sharper than you want the finished dish.
- YieldA pint of juice and a pint of cream, plus the water, makes something over a quart — six to eight servings, or eight glasses of the uncongealed raspberry version.
"Bohemian cream" appears in nineteenth-century English and French confectionery for a fruit purée lightened with whipped cream and set with a gelling agent, and it belongs to a family of moulded and iced creams that all depend on the same technique. Isinglass was the fashionable setting agent before commercial leaf and powdered gelatine displaced it: the best grades came from sturgeon bladders imported through Russia, which is why Victorian books often specify "Russian isinglass" or, as here, simply "the best." The direction to "mould for freezing" implies the ice-and-salt pack of a household that bought ice by the block and kept it in a chest — the thirty-minute time is a reminder of how efficient such a bath is compared with a domestic freezer. The name is generally taken as a decorative geographical flourish rather than evidence of any Bohemian origin.