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Strawberry Ice Cream II
3 pints thin cream 2 boxes strawberries 1 3/4 cups sugar 2 cups milk 1 1/2 tablespoons arrowroot Wash and hull berries, sprinkle with sugar, let stand one hour, mash, and rub through strainer. Scald one and one-half cups milk; dilute arrowroot with remaining milk, add to hot milk, and cook ten minutes in double boiler; cool, add cream, freeze to a mush, add fruit, and finish freezing.
A cooked-starch base rather than a custard, which keeps the texture smooth without egg. The quantities make a large batch, sized for a hand-cranked freezer.
- Two boxes of strawberriesIn American cookbooks of this period a box of berries usually means a quart box, so roughly 1 1/4 to 1 1/2 lb of fruit each. Two boxes should give somewhere in the region of 3 cups of strained pulp, though the recipe gives no yield for the fruit.
- Thin creamThin cream corresponds broadly to what is now sold as light or coffee cream, generally reckoned at somewhere around 18 to 20 percent butterfat. Half-and-half is the nearest widely available substitute; heavy cream would make a distinctly richer mixture than the recipe intends.
- Arrowroot as stabiliserThe cooked arrowroot and milk take the place of eggs here, thickening the base so the ice crystals stay fine. The recipe specifies the full ten minutes in the double boiler, and cooling before the cream goes in.
- Macerate, then strainThe hour under sugar draws juice and softens the fruit so it will go through a sieve. Straining out the seeds is what keeps the finished cream smooth; pureeing in a blender and skipping the sieve will not give the same result.
- Why the fruit goes in lastThe sugar carried in with the fruit lowers the freezing point of the mixture. Bringing the dairy base to a mush first, then stirring in the pulp, is what the recipe directs.
- FreezingWritten for an ice-and-salt bucket freezer, but the method transfers directly to any modern churn: chill the base thoroughly, churn to soft-serve consistency, add the fruit, churn briefly again, then harden in the freezer for several hours.
- YieldThe unfrozen mixture comes to roughly 2 3/4 quarts, so something over three quarts once churned and expanded -- a large batch by modern standards.