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Bohemian Ice Cream
The smaller varieties of ripe red fruit are used to make this cream; they are pulped through a fine sieve, and to 1 pint of the juice thus procured, add 11/2 ounces of the best isinglass, dissolved in 1/2 pint of water. Sweeten to taste, and squeeze in lemon juice if liked. Mix to this quantity 1 pint of sweetened whipped cream, and mould for freezing. These creams, where raspberries only are used, may be put into glasses, and made without isinglass-in the proportions of 1 pound of fruit juice to 1 pint of whipped cream. Time to freeze, about thirty minutes.
A fruit-and-cream frozen mousse rather than a custard ice cream: no eggs, no cooking, and the body comes from whipped cream stiffened with a setting agent. The one thing to get right is the isinglass — it must be fully dissolved and still fluid but no longer hot when it meets the cream, or it will set in threads before it can be folded in.
- IsinglassDried sturgeon swim bladder, sold in leaf or shred form and still used to fine beer and wine. Powdered or leaf gelatin does the same job; for the 1½ pints of liquid here, about half an ounce (roughly two envelopes) of powdered gelatin bloomed in the half pint of water is ample, since modern gelatin sets considerably harder than isinglass shreds.
- Which fruit"Smaller varieties of ripe red fruit" means raspberries, strawberries, red currants, loganberries — anything that will pulp raw. Sieve twice for raspberries and currants; a single pass leaves seeds and pips that read as grit once frozen.
- The pound of juiceIn the raspberry variation the fruit is given by weight, not volume: 1 lb of juice is about 2 cups, so the ratio there is roughly equal parts juice and whipped cream. That version has no setting agent and stays soft, which is why it goes into glasses rather than a mould.
- Sweeten enough"To taste" needs to be judged cold and generously — sugar is what keeps the mixture from freezing to a brick. Around 3/4 cup per quart of finished mixture is a reasonable starting point, tasted before freezing, since the perceived sweetness drops sharply once frozen.
- FoldingWhip the cream to soft peaks only. Stir a little of the fruit and gelatin mixture into the cream first to slacken it, then fold in the rest; overworked cream turns buttery and the ice loses its lift.
- "Mould for freezing"The original assumes a metal mould buried in an ice-and-salt pail. A loaf tin or pudding basin lined with plastic wrap and set in the freezer works the same way — this is a still-frozen mixture, not a churned one, and the whipped cream substitutes for the churning.
- Time to freezeThirty minutes applies to ice and coarse salt, which draws heat out of a metal mould far faster than the still air of a domestic freezer. Allow four hours in a freezer for a moulded quart, and unmould after a minute or two at room temperature.
- YieldAbout 2½ pints of mixture before freezing (1 pint juice, ½ pint dissolved isinglass, 1 pint whipped cream). It is rich, and the portions were meant to be modest.
Isinglass was a household setting agent of choice through much of the nineteenth century, sold by the ounce in shreds or leaves and reckoned to give a clearer, more delicate set than the bone gelatines of the day — hence its appearance in jellies, blancmanges and cold creams long after packaged granulated gelatin became available late in the century. The "Bohemian" of the name is the vaguer part: the label appears to be attached loosely to fancy or foreign-sounding sweets, and nothing here points to a geographic origin. What is clear is the structure: a compilation like this one placed such a recipe among the ice creams because a household with an ice pail but no eggs to spare, or no wish to cook a custard in July, could still put something frozen on the table from a bowl of soft summer fruit and a pint of cream.