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Ice Cream
— Mrs. Thomas E. Jones
One quart of milk, one can condensed milk, one-half pint cream; place in double boiler and cook, flavor to taste. Dissolve one-half package Knox gelatine in teacupful water; after milk is cooked add gelatine, stirring constantly for five minutes; strain, cool and freeze. Any flavoring.
— Mrs. Charles E. Willard
A Philadelphia-style custardless ice cream, thickened with gelatine rather than eggs — a common trick in community cookbooks of this period, where the gelatine keeps the texture smooth without a cooked custard. Most of the work is in the chilling and the freezing.
- The condensed milk is the sugar"One can condensed milk" means sweetened condensed milk; period cans ran roughly 14 to 16 oz. There is no other sweetener in the recipe, so do not substitute evaporated milk.
- How much gelatineA Knox package of this era held about an ounce of granulated gelatine, enough to set roughly two quarts of liquid, so "one-half package" is somewhere near half an ounce — about two modern envelopes. The amount is genuinely imprecise; err low, since too much gelatine gives a rubbery, chewy freeze.
- Bloom before you stir it inLet the gelatine stand in the teacup of cold water until it swells and goes translucent, then add it to the hot milk off the strongest heat. Dumping dry granules into hot liquid produces the lumps the straining step is there to catch.
- Cook means heat, not boilIn a double boiler the milk and cream want to reach scalding — around 175F, steaming with a rim of bubbles. Boiling is neither needed nor wanted and will give the mixture a cooked-milk flavour.
- Chill properly before freezing"Cool" should mean thoroughly cold, ideally several hours or overnight in the refrigerator. A warm base churns slowly, freezes coarse, and lets the gelatine begin to set into strands.
- FlavouringAdd extracts to the cooled base, not the hot one, or the alcohol carries the aroma off. A tablespoon of vanilla extract suits this quantity; for fruit, purée and strain it, and expect the extra water to firm up the freeze.
- FreezingThe original assumes a crank freezer packed with ice and coarse rock salt, roughly one part salt to six or eight parts ice. A modern churn handles it directly; without one, freeze in a shallow pan and beat thoroughly three or four times as it sets.
- Yield and keepingThe liquid alone comes to close to two quarts, so expect at least that much frozen; serves eight or more. Gelatine ice creams tend to turn tough and slightly bouncy after a day or two in the freezer, so this is best eaten the day it is made.
This is a thrift recipe wearing party clothes: a quart of ordinary milk, a can of condensed milk and only a half-pint of cream are made to behave like a rich custard through the mechanical help of gelatine. Both of its enabling ingredients had New York State connections — Gail Borden's condensed milk business, patented in 1856, took hold during and after the Civil War and ran important plants in New York State, and Charles Knox's granulated gelatine, sold pre-ground in packages from Johnstown, New York, from 1890, spared cooks the older labour of boiling down calves' feet or shaving isinglass. Knox issued recipe booklets promoting such uses, and gelatine-set ice creams turn up throughout church and village fundraising cookbooks of the period. Two names appear around this receipt, Mrs. Thomas E. Jones above and Mrs. Charles E. Willard below; which of them belongs to this recipe is not certain from the page as printed.