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Lemon Ice Cream
Mix the grated rind of two lemons and one orange with one quart of mixed milk and cream and partially freeze. Have ready a syrup made of the juice of two large lemons and one orange and a pint of sugar. When cool add this to the partly frozen cream and finish freezing. (More sugar may be preferred.)
A late-nineteenth-century still-frozen custard-less ice cream, built for a hand-cranked bucket freezer. The method is sound in a modern machine so long as you respect the order of operations.
- The hinge: add the syrup cold and lateLemon juice can curdle dairy, and does so most readily when the mixture is warm. The recipe delays the acid until the base is half frozen and thick, which reduces the risk. Chill the syrup thoroughly and pour it in slowly with the dasher running.
- A pint of sugarSugar was measured by volume; a pint is 2 cups, roughly 14 oz or 400 g. That is generous for a quart of dairy, but citrus needs it, and the sugar also keeps the ice cream scoopable. The parenthetical "more sugar may be preferred" has limits — much beyond this and the base will not freeze firm.
- Making the syrupJuice from two lemons and an orange is roughly 1/2 to 3/4 cup, at best barely enough to dissolve 2 cups of sugar. Warm the juice with the sugar and a few tablespoons of water until clear, then cool completely.
- Mixed milk and creamUse half whole milk and half heavy cream for a quart. All milk freezes icy; all cream churns toward butter under a dasher.
- Steep the zestGrate the rinds directly into the dairy and let it stand covered in the refrigerator for an hour or more before churning. The oils need contact time, and a fine microplane rind will not read as bitter.
- "Partially freeze"In a modern machine this is the soft-serve stage, about 15 minutes in, when the base holds a ribbon. Add the syrup then and churn another 10 minutes.
- RipeningBucket freezers packed with ice and salt gave a long, slow hardening period. Transfer to a container and freeze at least 4 hours before serving; the flavor is flat straight from the churn.
- YieldAbout 1 1/2 quarts, serving eight.
Lemon ice cream sits in a long line of citrus ices that reached English and American tables well before mechanical refrigeration, when ice was harvested in winter, packed in sawdust, and sold through the summer. The hand-cranked freezer with an inner canister and a dasher, turned in a bucket of ice and rock salt, put frozen desserts within reach of ordinary households from the mid-nineteenth century onward, and cookbooks of the period are thick with them. This version is eggless — a Philadelphia-style ice cream rather than a cooked custard — which suits citrus, since egg yolks mute the sharpness that is the whole point. Keeping the syrup separate is a sensible precaution: acid meets dairy last, and cold, which helps guard against curdling.