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Sultana Roll
Soak one-fourth of a box of gelatine in one pint of fresh milk over night. In the morning scald and when nearly cold add one pint of cream, whipped; when very cold stir in sugar to taste and one small teaspoon each of vanilla and almond extract; color leaf green and freeze. Then fill a mould lined with Sultana raisins, soaked three hours in brandy; fill the center of the mould with one-half pint of cream whipped stiff and sweetened with one-fourth cup of powdered sugar and flavored with one-half teaspoon of vanilla; cover mould, pack in salt and ice for two hours. Serve with claret sauce. Stir one cup of sugar till dissolved in onefourth of a cup of water on stove; boil till slightly thick, cool and add four tablespoons of claret.
— Miss Violette Hall
A moulded frozen dessert (a bombe in all but name) from the era of the hand-crank freezer. Nothing here is difficult, but several of the quantities and all of the equipment need translating.
- A quarter box of gelatineBoxes of granulated gelatine were commonly around 1 oz, so a quarter box works out at roughly 1 scant tablespoon, or about 7 g; box sizes were not standard across the period, so treat this as an approximation. Soak it cold in the milk overnight, then scald the milk to dissolve it fully.
- "Freeze" means churnThe green base was frozen in a salt-and-ice crank freezer, which aerates as it chills. In a modern machine, churn until it holds a soft-serve consistency; it must still be spreadable to line the mould. A still-frozen tray version will set too hard to work with.
- Packing in salt and iceThe covered mould was buried in a bucket of crushed ice and rock salt at roughly three parts ice to one part salt, which holds well below 32F. A modern freezer will do the same job, but it chills more slowly than a salt-and-ice pack, so allow longer than the stated two hours if the mould has not firmed.
- SultanasSold now as golden raisins. Three hours in brandy leaves them plump and soft enough not to freeze into pebbles; drain them before pressing them against the mould, or the loose brandy will keep that layer from setting.
- Almond extractAlmond extract turns medicinal quickly. Start with a quarter teaspoon of modern extract against the full teaspoon of vanilla and taste before adding more.
- "Color leaf green"Simply a light green tint, from bottled or prepared vegetable colouring; green was conventionally associated with almond and pistachio flavours at the time. Add it a drop at a time to the cold custard before churning.
- Claret sauceClaret meant red Bordeaux, so any dry, unoaked red works. Boil the sugar syrup only until it thickens slightly (a couple of minutes at most), cool it fully, then stir in the wine off the heat so the alcohol and fruit are not cooked away. Keep it refrigerated.
- Unmoulding and yieldUnmoulding -- Dip the mould briefly in warm water, invert onto a chilled plate, then let the roll stand 10 minutes before slicing so the centre is not glassy. The quantities given fill a large mould — well over a quart once the cream is whipped.
Sultana roll belongs to the family of moulded ice creams — bombes, biscuits and "rolls" — that filled the frozen-dessert chapters of American cookbooks between about 1880 and 1920, when a wooden freezer, a bucket of ice and a bag of rock salt were ordinary kitchen equipment rather than a specialty. The name comes from the sultana raisin, the pale seedless grape long associated with Smyrna and the Levantine trade, which reached American grocers dried and was routinely plumped in brandy or sherry for puddings and ices; the pairing of sultanas with a green almond-flavoured cream was a stock combination of the period, appearing under the name "sultana roll" in professional and community books alike. That it turns up in a Catskill village collection, signed by a local contributor, suggests how readily hotel and resort cookery may have filtered into home kitchens in a region that fed summer visitors from the city — a dish that needed two hours of packing in ice was a display piece, meant to be turned out whole at the table.