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Noyeau Ice Creams
Sweeten half a pint of thick cream with two ounces of sugar. Add a table-spoonful of strained lemon-juice and a glass of noyeau. Mix thoroughly, and freeze in the usual way. Time, half an hour to freeze the mixture. Probable cost, 1s. 6d. Sufficient for a pint of ice cream.
A three-ingredient still-freeze from the era of the ice-and-salt pail. The only real difficulty is the alcohol, which fights the freezer.
- "A glass" of noyeauIn Victorian usage this means a wine glass, roughly 2 fl oz. That is a great deal of spirit for 10 fl oz of cream; start with half and taste, or the mixture will stay slushy.
- Half a pint of creamAn imperial half-pint is 10 fl oz, about 1¼ US cups. Two ounces of sugar is a generous ¼ cup by volume.
- What noyeau isCrème de noyau, a sweetened spirit flavoured with the kernels of apricots, peaches or cherries — almond-scented and usually tinted pink or clear. Bottled versions are still sold; amaretto is the nearest common substitute. Do not attempt to infuse your own from apricot or peach kernels, which carry amygdalin.
- Alcohol and freezingSpirits depress the freezing point sharply. This is the hinge of the recipe: keep the liqueur at or below about two tablespoons per cup of cream, or no amount of churning will firm it.
- "Freeze in the usual way"The original assumes an ice-and-salt freezer of some kind, but specifies neither vessel nor method. A modern churn takes 20–25 minutes; transfer to a chilled container and harden in the freezer for at least two hours.
- The lemon juiceIt sharpens the almond note and will thicken the cream very slightly on contact. Strain it, as directed, and stir it in just before churning rather than letting the mixture stand.
- YieldOne imperial pint, as the recipe states. It is rich and strongly flavoured, and small portions suit it.
Noyau is simply the French word for the stone of a fruit, and the liqueur takes its name from the kernels inside — apricot, peach or cherry — steeped in brandy with sugar to give a flavour close to bitter almond. It was a fashionable cordial in Britain from the late eighteenth century onward, with the versions from Martinique especially prized, and it turns up frequently in Victorian cookery in creams, jellies, trifles and ices as well as being drunk as a liqueur. This recipe sits among other liqueur-flavoured ices of the period, built on much the same frame of sweetened cream plus a flavouring glass. Of the stated cost of 1s. 6d., the liqueur would have been the dearest part; cream and sugar were cheap.