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Praline Ice Cream
3 pints cream 1 1/3 cups sugar 1 cup Jordan almonds 1/4 teaspoon salt 1 tablespoon vanilla Blanch almonds cut in pieces crosswise, and bake in a shallow pan until well browned, shaking pan frequently; then finely chop. Caramelize one-half of the sugar, and add slowly to two cups of the cream scalded. As soon as sugar is melted, add nuts, remaining sugar, and salt. Cool, add remaining cream, and freeze. A few grains salt is always an improvement to any ice cream mixture.
A caramel-and-toasted-almond custardless ice cream, thickened by nothing but cream and sugar. It is simple enough that the caramel step decides whether it succeeds.
- Jordan almondsHere this means the large, flat Spanish almonds sold whole and raw, not the sugar-shelled confection the name now suggests. Whole raw almonds, blanched and skinned, are the correct substitute.
- Toasting the almondsThe recipe gives no temperature: a shallow pan in a moderate oven, around 350F, for roughly 8 to 12 minutes, shaken often, will answer. Take them out when they are a shade lighter than you want; they darken in the residual heat and scorched almonds will make the whole batch bitter.
- The caramel is the hingeMelt about 2/3 cup of the sugar dry in a heavy pan until it is deep amber, then add it to the scalded cream slowly and off the heat. It will seize and spit; keep stirring over low heat until the hardened caramel dissolves completely, or you will get gritty threads in the frozen cream.
- Quantities in modern terms3 pints cream is 6 cups. Use heavy cream, or 4 cups heavy and 2 cups whole milk if you want it less rich; the mixture has no eggs and relies on butterfat for body.
- The vanillaThe tablespoon of vanilla listed among the ingredients is never called for in the method. Stir it in with the remaining cream, after the caramel base has cooled.
- Freezing"Freeze" meant a hand-crank churn packed with ice and coarse salt. In a modern machine, chill the base thoroughly first, ideally overnight, then churn 20 to 30 minutes and harden in the freezer for two hours.
- YieldAbout 2 quarts, or 10 to 12 servings. Halve it if your machine holds only a quart and a half.
- The salt noteThe closing remark is sound and still repeated: a quarter teaspoon of salt sharpens caramel and almond flavours that would otherwise read as flatly sweet.
Praline in American cookbooks of this period covers two different things: the New Orleans pecan-and-sugar patty, and the older French praline, an almond cooked in caramelized sugar and then crushed for use as a flavouring. This recipe is squarely the French sense, using almonds rather than pecans and folding caramel into the cream itself instead of stirring in a ready-made candy. Eggless ice creams built on scalded cream, sugar and a flavouring were common in the hand-crank era, alongside custard-based ones, and the salt-and-ice packing was the real labour of the dish; household churns came in a range of sizes. Caramelizing only half the sugar has a practical logic whatever the author's intent: caramelized sugar is less sweet, so the remainder goes in plain.