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Frozen Apple Custard
Make the custard as for Apple Custard Pie, using either one pint of apple sauce or one pint of grated apple, and whipping in the stiff whites of the eggs after the custard is partially frozen.
This is a two-line variation that assumes you have the book's Apple Custard Pie custard in front of you, and it finishes with raw egg white folded into a frozen base. That last step is the problem.
- Why it failsThe stiffly beaten whites are whipped in after the mixture is partly frozen, so they are never brought to any temperature at all. Nothing in the process heats them, and freezing does not kill Salmonella — it simply holds it dormant until the dessert thaws in the mouth. A frozen dessert made to a current recipe, using pasteurised whites or a cooked meringue, is the thing to make instead.
- The custard itself is not on this pageThe instruction depends entirely on the Apple Custard Pie entry elsewhere in the book, which supplies the custard ingredients. Read as a standalone recipe it gives no quantities beyond the apple, and no freezing time.
- A pint of apple sauceTwo cups; a thin, watery sauce will freeze into hard shards. "Grated apple" means raw apple grated, which browns quickly once cut.
- What "partially frozen" meantThe book most likely assumes a hand-cranked freezer packed with ice and salt, or a packed pail, which the cook could open to check. The stage described appears to be a soft slush that still takes a fold.
Frozen custards and fruit ices were standard closing courses in American households by the turn of the twentieth century, and single-fruit cookbooks like this one were built to show how far one cheap, storable crop could be stretched. The apple section appears to run from sauce and pies through jellies and dumplings to ices, and this entry is a thrift device as much as a dessert: the same custard mixture that fills a pie is redirected into the freezer, with beaten whites added to lighten a base that would otherwise set dense. The technique of folding whipped whites into a half-frozen mixture belongs to the family of desserts sometimes said to be catalogued as mousses or "frappés," and egg white was long used as an aerator in period recipes.