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Nougat Ice Cream
3 cups milk 1 cup sugar Yolks 5 eggs 1 teaspoon salt 1 1/2 cups heavy cream Whites 5 eggs 1/3 cup, each, pistachio, filbert, English walnut, and almond meats 1 teaspoon almond extract 1 tablespoon vanilla Make a custard of first four ingredients, strain, and cool. Add heavy cream beaten until stiff, whites of eggs beaten until stiff, nut meats finely chopped, and flavoring; then freeze.
A rich frozen custard studded with four kinds of nuts, from the era of the hand-cranked freezer. As written it cannot be recommended, because half the egg goes in raw and the mixture is never heated again.
- The raw whites are the problemThe yolks are cooked into the custard, but five stiffly beaten whites are folded into a mixture that then goes straight into the freezer. Nothing after that point reaches a temperature that would deal with Salmonella, and freezing does not kill it. A dessert eaten cold and uncooked by children and older guests is exactly the wrong place for shell eggs that have never been heated.
- Freezing is not a safety stepFreezing does not destroy Salmonella, and nothing after the custard is cooked brings the mixture to a safe temperature again. For nougat ice cream, use a current recipe built on a fully cooked base.
- "Freeze" means a churnIn this period the instruction meant packing a canister in a wooden bucket with cracked ice and coarse rock salt, roughly three parts ice to one of salt, and turning the crank until the dasher stalled. The quantities here add up to something over six cups of mixture before aeration, so a canister larger than two quarts is safer.
- The salt looks wrongThe salt looks high — A full teaspoon is more salt than many custards of this date call for; period recipes often specify a saltspoon or a few grains. Reduce it if it seems heavy to you.
- Filberts and nut meatsFilbert is the old name for the hazelnut, and "English walnut" distinguishes the familiar walnut from the American black walnut, which is far stronger in flavour. "Nut meats" simply means the shelled kernels.
- Nougat, not nougatDespite the name there is no cooked sugar or praline here; the nut character comes from raw chopped kernels and almond extract, so the almonds will stay soft rather than crisp in the frozen base.