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Vanilla Ice Cream
Pound 1/2 a stick of vanilla, and mix with it 1/2 pound of sugar. Rub it through a hair sieve, and add 1/2 pint of milk and the yolks of 2 eggs. Simmer the mixture over a slow fire for ten minutes, stirring briskly all the time. When cool, add 1 pint of cream and a small pinch of salt. Freeze and mould in the usual way. Time, ten minutes to simmer the custard.
A straightforward egg custard base flavoured with whole vanilla bean rather than extract. The only real hazards are overheating the custard and under-hardening the finished ice cream.
- Do not let the custard boil"simmer over a slow fire" is best read as holding the mixture below boiling, around 170-180F in modern terms, until it thickens enough to coat a spoon. Two yolks in half a pint of milk can scramble; keep it below a simmer and strain the custard after cooking as insurance.
- Half a stick of vanillaA "stick" is a whole vanilla pod, so this is half a pod, perhaps three or four inches depending on the bean. Pounding it in a mortar with the sugar grinds the pod and works the seeds and oils into the sugar. Around a teaspoon of good extract, stirred in after the custard cools, is the modern substitute.
- Hair sieveA fine-mesh horsehair sieve, used to catch the woody fragments of pod while letting the seeds and scented sugar through. Any fine nylon or steel sieve does the same job.
- MeasuresHalf a pound of sugar is a generous cup; half a pint of milk is one cup, one pint of cream is two cups. If the book is British in origin the pints are 20 fl oz, which makes the whole mixture larger and proportionally less sweet against the fixed sugar and eggs, but does not change the method.
- Sweetness is structuralThat much sugar against three cups of dairy reads sweet by modern taste, but sugar depresses the freezing point and keeps the texture scoopable. Cutting it substantially gives a harder, icier result.
- "Freeze and mould in the usual way"In the original that means a pail churn packed with cracked ice and rock salt, cranked until stiff, then packed into a mould and buried in more ice and salt to set. In a modern machine, chill the base thoroughly overnight, churn 20-25 minutes, then harden in the freezer at least 4 hours.
- YieldRoughly a quart, serving four to six.