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PEACH CREAM ICE (another way)
Boil a dozen ripe peaches in syrup, and rub them through a sieve, as directed in the last recipe. Mix with the pulp a custard, made of half a pint of milk, the yolks of six eggs, and three ounces of sugar. Add two or three drops of cochineal to impart a pink tinge to the preparation, and freeze as directed in the preceding recipe. It may remain in the ice till wanted. Probable cost, 1s. 6d. per pint, with peaches 2d. each. Sufficient for a quart of ice.
A Victorian custard-based fruit ice that assumes you have the two preceding recipes to hand: a sugar syrup for poaching the fruit, and a pail freezer packed with ice and salt. Both are easy to supply.
- The syrupThe recipe leans on the preceding one for this. A workable poaching syrup is roughly equal weights of sugar and water, simmered until clear. Halve and stone the peaches, poach them until soft, then sieve; the skins slip off in the process and stay behind in the sieve.
- Imperial measuresA British pint is 20 fl oz, so half a pint is 1¼ US cups of milk. Three ounces of sugar is a scant half cup. Six yolks to 10 fl oz of milk is a very rich custard by modern standards, which is what makes the ice smooth without cream.
- Cooking the custardStir over low heat or in a bain-marie until it coats the spoon, around 180F/82C. Past that the yolks curdle, and with this ratio of yolk to milk it happens quickly. Strain it, then combine with the cold peach pulp.
- CochinealCochineal is the red extract of the scale insect Dactylopius coccus; the pigment prepared from it is carmine, still sold as a food colour and labelled E120. It is entirely optional here; without it the ice is a pale buff rather than pink. Those avoiding insect-derived ingredients can leave it out or use beet powder.
- FreezingThe preceding recipe means a churn: ice packed with coarse salt around the canister, turned until set. A modern ice-cream machine does the same work. Chill the mixture thoroughly first, as a warm custard will not freeze to a fine grain.
- "It may remain in the ice till wanted"This means holding the sealed canister buried in the ice and salt, where it stays soft and scoopable. A domestic freezer at 0F will set it hard, so move it to the fridge for 15-20 minutes before serving.
- YieldA quart, or about 6 to 8 servings. Ripe peaches vary enormously; if the pulp is thin, reduce it briefly in a pan and cool before mixing, or the ice will be icy.
Cassell's gives fruit ices in clusters of variations, and this one is the custard version: where a plain water ice relies on syrup and fruit alone, the cream ice takes a boiled egg custard as its base, the same construction as a French glace \\ la. The costings are the giveaway as to period and audience: 1s. 6d. a pint, with peaches at twopence each, was a luxury dessert. Ice itself was cut in winter from lakes or imported in bulk from Norway and North America and kept in insulated ice wells, which is why the recipe treats the salted ice pail as an ordinary fixture and thinks nothing of leaving the canister sitting in it until dinner. Cochineal, imported from Mexico and the Canaries, was the standard household red for confectionery and jellies long before coal-tar dyes displaced it, and a Victorian cook tinting a pale fruit ice pink was following convention rather than deceiving anyone.