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Other Sweet Dishes: Cream
VANILLA ICE CREAM, JUNKET 1 pint of milk 1/2 tablespoonful of vanilla ex 1/2 cup of double cream tract 1/2 cup of sugar 1/2 junket tablet, 1 tablespoonful of cold water Crush the half tablet and let stand in the cold water to dissolve. Heat the milk, cream, sugar and vanilla to about 90 deg F.; stir in the dissolved tablet, pour into the can of the freezer and let stand in a warm place until the mixture "sets" or jellies. Do not jar the mixture while it is jellying. When cold freeze as in the first recipe. This makes an exceptionally nice ice cream.
CHOCOLATE ICE CREAM Melt one or two ounces of chocolate over hot water; add three or four tablespoonfuls of sugar and the same quantity of boiling water; stir and cook until smooth, then add to the cream or milk to be used. CARAMEL ICE CREAM Allow four extra tablespoonfuls of sugar, to each pint of milk or cream given in the previous recipes. Cook the half cup of sugar, given in the recipes, to caramel, add half a cup of water and let boil to a thick syrup. Add this with the extra sugar to the milk or cream and finish as usual. FROZEN CUSTARD 2 cups of milk 1/4 teaspoonful of salt Yolks of 4 eggs 1/2 cup of cream 1/2 cup of sugar, generous 3/4 tablespoonfuls of vanilla measure extract Use all the ingredients, save the last two, in making a "boiled custard;" when cold add the cream and vanilla and freeze as usual.
STRAWBERRY ICE CREAM 1 pint of milk 1/2 teaspoonful of salt 1/2 cup of sugar 1 basket of strawberries 2 level tablespoonfuls of cornstarch 1 1/2 cups of sugar (granulated) 1 pint of cream Sift together, several times, the sugar, cornstarch and salt, then cook in the milk, scalded over hot water; stir constantly until the mixture thickens and is smooth, then cover and let cook fifteen minutes. Pick over, wash and drain the berries; mix them with the sugar and let stand an hour or more, then press through a fine sieve. Strain the cornstarch mixture into the freezer, and when cold add the cream and begin to freeze the mixture. When half frozen add the strawberries and sugar and finish freezing.
A group of five ice cream variations built on the ice-and-salt hand freezer. The junket version is the unusual one, and it is the one with a real technique to respect.
- Junket tablets are rennetA junket tablet is a compressed dose of rennet, still sold as dessert tablets and functionally the same as a small measured amount of rennet extract. Half a tablet is a token quantity; crushing it and dissolving it in cold water first is what lets it disperse evenly through a pint of milk.
- The temperature is the hingeRennet sets milk at blood heat; it is most active at around 90 to 105F and is inactivated by heat much above about 140F, so "about 90 deg F" is worth taking literally. A thermometer helps. Too hot and the mixture never jellies; too cold and it takes a long, slow age to set.
- Do not jar the mixtureA rennet gel that is disturbed while setting breaks into curds and whey and will not reknit. Set the can somewhere warm and leave it alone until it has firmly set, as the recipe directs, then chill it thoroughly before churning.
- "Freeze as in the first recipe"The recipe referred to is not on this page; the standard period method is a crank freezer packed with crushed ice and coarse salt, commonly in the region of three parts ice to one of rock salt. Any modern ice cream maker gives much the same result; if you use a frozen-canister machine, the mixture must be refrigerator-cold going in.
- ChocolateThe one or two ounces here means unsweetened baking chocolate, not sweetened bar chocolate or chips. Melting it and then cooking it smooth with sugar and boiling water before it meets the dairy prevents grittiness.
- CaramelThe half cup of sugar from the base recipe is caramelized dry, then let down with water — expect violent spitting when the water hits the sugar, and add it off the heat. The four extra tablespoonfuls compensate for the sweetness burned off in caramelizing.
- A basket of strawberriesA market basket of the period is roughly a quart, on the order of 1 1/4 to 1 1/2 lb of berries. Sieving after an hour in the sugar leaves a smooth, seedless puree; the cornstarch base wants its full fifteen minutes of covered cooking or the starch tastes raw.
- YieldThe junket and frozen custard versions make roughly a quart; the strawberry recipe, with a pint of milk and a pint of cream, makes closer to twice that, so plan on churning a half batch or accepting leftovers. Homemade ice cream without stabilizers is best within a few days.
Junket ice cream belongs to an American vogue for rennet desserts. Standardized rennet extract was commercialized by the Danish pharmacist Christian Hansen's laboratory from the mid-1870s, and rennet in convenient tablet form was later marketed in the United States under the Junket name — cheap, shelf-stable, and requiring no eggs. Cooks liked them in frozen desserts because the soft rennet gel gave body and a smooth texture to a plain milk-and-cream mixture, standing in for the yolks of a proper frozen custard, which is offered here as the richer alternative. The other three variations show how the period's cookery writing worked: one base formula and a set of instructions for altering it, so that a household with a hand freezer could get four flavors out of one memorized proportion. The salt in the strawberry recipe is doing what salt still does in ice cream, sharpening the fruit rather than seasoning it.