Home › The Principles of Cookery › Strawberry Ice and Vanilla Ice in One Mould
Strawberry Ice and Vanilla Ice in One Mould
Flavour three-quarters of a pint of cream with half a stick of vanilla, by boiling them gently together for a short time; sweeten the cream, mix with it the well-whisked yolks of three eggs, and stir the mixture over a gentle fire till it begins to thicken. Strain it into a bowl. Rub ripe strawberries through a sieve, and take half a pint of the juice. Thoroughly mix with this half a pint of syrup at 35deg., and freeze the two creams in the usual way. Put an ice-mould in ice for a short time. Place in the middle of it a piece of cardboard, cut so as to fit the mould, and to divide it into two equal parts. Put the vanilla ice at one side of the division, and the strawberry ice at the other. Draw out the separating cardboard, close the mould, and surround it with ice till it is frozen. When wanted, plunge it into hot water for an instant, turn it upside down on a napkin on a dish, and serve. Sufficient for a quart of ice.
A Victorian bombe in two colours, built from a cooked vanilla custard and an uncooked strawberry water ice. The technique is straightforward; the obstacles are the measurements and the assumption that you own a pewter mould and a tub of rock salt.
- Imperial pintsCassell's pint is 20 fl oz, not 16. Three-quarters of a pint of cream is about 1¾ US cups (425 ml), and half a pint of strawberry juice or syrup is 10 fl oz (285 ml).
- Syrup at 35 degreesThis is a reading on the Baumé saccharometer, the standard tool of the Victorian confectioner, not an oven or freezer temperature. Syrup at 35° Baumé is a heavy sugar syrup of roughly 65 per cent sugar — in practice about two parts sugar dissolved in one part water by weight, boiled briefly and cooled. Precision matters here: too little sugar and the strawberry side freezes into a solid brick, too much and it never sets.
- The custard is the hinge"Till it begins to thicken" means 170-175F on a thermometer, when the mixture coats the back of a spoon and a drawn finger leaves a clean track. Three yolks in 1¾ cups of cream is a thin custard and will curdle quickly past 180F. Strain it, as instructed, and chill it thoroughly before churning.
- Sweeten the creamNo quantity is given for the vanilla side. Around 3 oz (85 g) of sugar to this volume of cream is in period range and balances the very sweet strawberry ice.
- Vanilla stickHalf a vanilla pod, split, infused in the hot cream for 15-20 minutes off the heat rather than boiled hard. One to two teaspoons of extract, added to the cooled custard, is the substitute.
- "Freeze in the usual way"For the period this meant a pewter freezing pot packed in ice and coarse salt, turned and scraped by hand. An ice cream machine does the same work; churn each mixture separately to a firm scoopable stage, not soft-serve, or the two will bleed into each other in the mould.
- The dividerDamp cardboard is a poor choice now. Cut the divider from stiff food-grade plastic or a doubled sheet of foil, chill the mould hard first, pack both ices firmly against the divider, then withdraw it in one smooth pull and smooth the join.
- Setting and unmouldingA domestic freezer will do the job of the ice-and-salt bath; allow 4-6 hours for a quart mould. The instant in hot water is genuinely an instant — a few seconds, then invert onto the napkin, which is there to absorb meltwater and stop the bombe sliding.
- YieldA quart, as the recipe states. Six portions is realistic now.
Moulded ices divided into contrasting colours and flavours were a set piece of the late nineteenth-century dinner table, descended from the elaborate frozen work of French confectioners such as Emy and Carême and reaching English households through professional cooks like Francatelli and Gouffé. The two components here belong to two distinct traditions: the vanilla side is a glace à la crème, an egg custard frozen; the strawberry side is a water ice built on sugar syrup and fruit juice, which is why the syrup is specified by saccharometer degree rather than by cupfuls — sugar concentration, not richness, is what keeps a water ice from freezing hard. The Baumé hydrometer was familiar equipment in professional confectionery, and its disappearance from domestic use is one reason recipes of this kind read as opaque today.