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Coffee Sauce
(To be served with Vanilla Ice Cream) 1 1/2 cups milk 1/2 cup ground coffee 1/3 cup sugar 3/4 tablespoon arrowroot Few grains salt Scald milk with coffee, and let stand twenty minutes. Mix remaining ingredients, and pour on gradually the hot infusion which has been strained. Cook five minutes, and serve hot.
Chocolate Ice Cream I 1 quart thin cream 1 cup sugar Few grains salt 1 1/2 squares unsweetened chocolate or 1/4 cup prepared cocoa 1 tablespoon vanilla Melt chocolate, and dilute with hot water to pour easily, add to cream; then add sugar, salt, and flavoring, and freeze.
Strawberry Ice Cream I 3 pints thin cream 2 boxes berries 2 cups sugar Few grains salt Wash and hull berries, sprinkle with sugar, cover, and let stand two hours. Mash, and squeeze through cheese-cloth; then add salt. Freeze cream to the consistency of a mush, add gradually fruit juice, and finish freezing. Rich Jersey milk may be substituted for cream.
A thin pouring sauce, thickened with arrowroot rather than eggs, built on a coffee infusion in milk. The point to watch is the arrowroot: it thickens fast and thins again if pushed too hard.
- Arrowroot behaviourArrowroot sets almost as soon as the liquid reaches a simmer and breaks down with prolonged or vigorous boiling, turning the sauce watery. Bring it just to a bare simmer, hold it there for the five minutes over low heat, and stir constantly.
- That 3/4 tablespoonRead it as 2 1/4 teaspoons. If the sauce is to be spooned over ice cream rather than poured, a full tablespoon gives a slightly heavier coating.
- Ground coffee, not brewedThe coffee is steeped in scalded milk like a tea, then strained out; no brewing equipment is involved. Use a medium grind and strain through a fine sieve lined with cloth, or the sauce will be gritty.
- ScaldingScald means heating the milk until it steams and bubbles form at the edge, roughly 180F, not boiling. Cover the pan during the twenty-minute steep so the surface does not skin over.
- Mixing orderCombine sugar, arrowroot and salt dry, then add the hot strained infusion in a thin stream while whisking. Adding liquid all at once to dry arrowroot gives lumps that will not disperse later.
- Yield and servingRather less than the 1 1/2 cups of milk you start with, since the half cup of grounds holds back a fair amount when strained; figure four to six servings. Serve it hot as directed; the temperature contrast is the whole idea, and cooled arrowroot sauces set to a soft gel.
- Coffee strengthHalf a cup of grounds to 1 1/2 cups milk is a strong infusion by modern taste, though the sugar and milk mute it considerably. Taste after straining and shorten the steep if it reads bitter.
Arrowroot, milled from the rhizome of Maranta arundinacea and imported chiefly from the West Indies, was valued in late nineteenth-century American cookery for setting clear where flour sets cloudy, and was commonly recommended for invalid cookery as being easily digested. Cookbooks of this period gave substantial space to pudding sauces, on the assumption that a plain frozen or steamed dessert was finished at the table with something poured over it.