Ice Cream

A plain vanilla custard-free ice cream, built on the assumption that the cook owns a hand-crank freezer packed with ice and salt. The only puzzling ingredient is the packaged "ice cream powder," which was a stabiliser rather than a flavouring.

• Ice cream powderA commercial product of the period, generally a gelatin- or cornstarch-based preparation, sometimes with sugar or gum tragacanth, sold to keep churned cream smooth; some brands also carried their own flavouring and colour, though this recipe adds vanilla separately, so a plain stabiliser seems to be what is meant. A teaspoon of cornstarch cooked into a little of the cream, or half a teaspoon of powdered gelatin bloomed and dissolved, does much the same job; leaving it out entirely gives a coarser, faster-melting result.
• Thin creamNineteenth-century "thin cream" is roughly what is now sold as light or single cream, about 18 to 20 percent butterfat. Half-and-half is close. Modern heavy cream at 36 percent will churn much richer and stiffer than intended here.
• Chill before churningThe recipe says nothing about this. Get the mixture down to refrigerator temperature or below before it goes into the freezer, or the churn will run long and the texture will suffer.
• Dissolve the sugarMixing the sugar with the dry powder first would help keep the starch or gelatin from clumping, though the recipe does not say so. Stir until no grain is felt on the tongue, since sugar that has not fully dissolved tends to leave the base gritty.
• "Freeze"In the original this means a crank freezer with a salted-ice packing; period directions vary, commonly somewhere between three and eight parts crushed ice to one part rock salt, cranked twenty to thirty minutes. A modern machine takes fifteen to twenty-five minutes to the same soft-set stage.
• RipeningPeriod practice was to pack the finished can in fresh ice and salt for an hour or two to firm up and let the flavour settle. The freezer at around 0F does this in two to three hours; the ice cream is at its best texture that same day.
• YieldAbout a scant quart, or four modest servings. It doubles without trouble if the freezer capacity allows.