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Chocolate Ice Cream
Dissolve half a pound of the best French chocolate in a breakfast-cupful of boiling water, add a pint and a half of cream and half a pound of sugar boiled to a syrup; strain through silk and put into the ice pail. Freeze in the usual way. When frozen, add three gills of double cream, work till smooth, and close the pot till the ice is wanted.
A custard-free chocolate ice, rich in cream and finished with more cream folded in after churning. The measures are British imperial and the vessels belong to the era of salt-and-ice freezing.
- The measuresAn imperial pint and a half is 30 fl oz, about 3 3/4 US cups. A gill is 5 fl oz here, so three gills is 15 fl oz, close to 2 cups. A breakfast-cupful is roughly 8-10 fl oz of boiling water.
- "Best French chocolate"In Cassell's day this generally meant a hard eating chocolate sold in blocks or cakes, often already sweetened, rather than cocoa powder. Use a good dark chocolate around 55-65 per cent and taste before adding all the sugar syrup, or the finished ice will be cloying by modern palates.
- Sugar boiled to a syrupHalf a pound of sugar dissolved in a little water and boiled briefly to a light syrup; the recipe does not specify a stage. The point is a syrup that blends smoothly into the cold mixture, not caramel.
- Strain through silkA fine-mesh sieve or a chinois does the same job. This step matters: undissolved chocolate specks and any grit from the syrup will read as sandiness in the frozen ice.
- The ice pailA pewter or tin canister set in a wooden pail packed with crushed ice and coarse salt, turned by hand and scraped down with a spatula. A modern ice cream machine stands in for it; chill the mixture thoroughly in the refrigerator first.
- The added creamThe 15 fl oz of double cream (about 48 per cent fat in Britain; US heavy cream at 36 per cent or more is the nearest equivalent) goes in after the base is frozen and is worked through. Whip it to soft peaks and fold it in at the end of churning for the lightest result; beating unwhipped cream into a set ice is hard work and tends to melt the base.
- "Close the pot till the ice is wanted"Repacking the sealed canister in fresh ice and salt is how it was held. In a freezer, press parchment onto the surface and give it 2-3 hours to firm; it is best within a day, as there are no eggs or stabilisers to hold off ice crystals.
- YieldAbout 2 quarts once churned and lightened, serving ten to twelve in the small portions of the period.
History: Cassell's belongs to the generation of cookery books written after ice became a commodity: North American lake ice and, increasingly, Norwegian ice arrived in British ports by the shipload from the mid-nineteenth century, and by the 1880s a reasonably prosperous household could keep an ice pail going through a dinner party. The chocolate is likely specified as French because France, and Paris in particular, had a reputation for finely ground, smooth eating chocolate at a time when much British cocoa was still coarse or adulterated with starch and sugar; Chocolat Menier and its rivals were among the best known. Note also what the recipe does not contain: no eggs, no custard, no arrowroot. This is a cream ice in the older sense, where the whole effect rests on the quality of the cream and the chocolate, and the second addition of double cream after freezing is a way of getting lightness without a cooked base.