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Cocoa Ice Cream
Mix very thoroughly 1/2 cup dry powdered cocoa Few grains salt 1 cup sugar and 1 tablespoon cornstarch. Add slowly 2 cups milk, scalded, and cook over boiling water 20 minutes, stirring until thickened and occasionally afterward. Pour over 2 eggs well beaten, chill, and add 2 cups cream beaten stiff 1 teaspoon vanilla and 1 cup syrup drained from canned raspberries or strawberries, and freeze.
If frozen in vacuum freezer, put mixture in center can of freezer; cover, invert freezer, and fill outer compartment with finely crushed ice mixed with half the amount of rock salt. Open the freezer occasionally, scrape cream from sides and mix well, using a long-bladed knife. If frozen in an ordinary freezer, it is not necessary to beat the cream. Put mixture in can of ice cream freezer, surround with three parts ice and one part salt. Let mixture stand 5 minutes, then turn crank slowly until mixture is stiff. When frozen drain off ice water and repack, using four parts ice and one part salt.
A cooked cornstarch-and-cocoa custard lightened with whipped cream and sweetened a second time with the syrup off a can of berries. The instructions assume two pieces of equipment that have largely disappeared: the crank freezer and the so-called vacuum freezer.
- The hinge: dissolve the cocoa dryWhisking the cocoa, sugar, cornstarch and salt together before any liquid goes in is what keeps the cocoa from clumping into dry pellets that never wet through. Add the scalded milk in a thin stream, whisking, not all at once.
- Cocoa"Dry powdered cocoa" means unsweetened cocoa powder, not drinking chocolate. Either natural (non-alkalized) or Dutch-process will work here; Dutch-process reads smoother and darker.
- Cooking over boiling waterA double boiler, 20 minutes, is longer than a cornstarch custard needs to thicken but it cooks out the raw starch taste. Stir often for the first five minutes, then every few minutes; a skin forms otherwise.
- The eggsPouring roughly two cups of near-boiling custard over two beaten eggs will normally carry the mixture past 160F, but the recipe never asks you to check. Temper the eggs with a ladleful first, return everything to the double boiler for a minute or two, and take it to 160F on a thermometer if you want certainty.
- Berry syrupOne cup of the drained syrup from canned raspberries or strawberries adds both sugar and a good deal of water. Berries canned in a light syrup will give a less sweet result; if you substitute thawed frozen berry juice, expect a less sweet and slightly icier result.
- "Vacuum freezer"An insulated still-freezing pail with an inner can, no crank. The instruction to invert it and pack the outer compartment with ice and half its weight in rock salt is the whole method; the periodic scraping with a long knife takes the place of a dasher.
- Ice-and-salt ratiosThree parts crushed ice to one part rock salt for freezing, four to one for repacking and hardening. More salt lowers the temperature of the ice bath and freezes the mixture faster; the leaner repacking mix holds the ice cream cold without over-chilling it.
- With a modern machineChill the base thoroughly, fold in the whipped cream and vanilla, and churn in any domestic ice cream maker until it mounds on the paddle, then harden two to three hours in the freezer. In a canister machine skip whipping the cream, exactly as the original says of the crank freezer.
- YieldRoughly 1 1/2 to 2 quarts, depending on how much air the whipped cream and churning carry in.
Home ice cream in the era of these luncheon menus was a matter of ice, rock salt and labor, and the two sets of instructions here mark a moment of transition: the crank freezer with its dasher, in American kitchens since the mid-nineteenth century, and the newer still-freezing insulated pail sold as a "vacuum freezer," which promised ice cream without cranking in exchange for the cook opening it up and scraping the sides by hand. The cup of syrup drained from canned raspberries is the more telling detail. Canned fruit was a staple of the pantry, and its syrup was too sweet and too good to pour away; using it to sweeten and perfume a chocolate custard is exactly the sort of thrift that runs quietly through household cookbooks of the period, dressed up here as a company dessert. The whipped cream folded in before freezing does the work a dasher would otherwise do, aerating a base that would freeze dense and heavy on its own.