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Violet Ice Cream
1 quart cream 3/4 cup sugar Few grains salt 1/3 cup Yvette Cordial 1 small bunch violets Violet coloring Mix first four ingredients. Remove stems from violets, and pound violets in a mortar until well macerated, then strain through cheese-cloth. Add extract to first mixture; color, freeze, and mould. Serve garnished with fresh or candied violets; the light purple cultivated violets should be used and the result will be most gratifying.
A late-Victorian style flower ice: an uncooked cream base flavored with violet liqueur and the pounded petals of true sweet violets. It works in a modern machine, but two ingredients need translating first.
- Yvette CordialCrème Yvette was a violet-and-berry liqueur that was discontinued in the later twentieth century and only revived decades afterwards. Crème de violette is the closest current equivalent; use the same 1/3 cup.
- Use the right violetThe recipe means Viola odorata and its cultivated forms, whose flowers are edible and carry the scent wanted here. African violets (Saintpaulia) are a different plant entirely and are not what is meant. Use blossoms you know have not been sprayed.
- CreamThe recipe says only "1 quart cream," unwhipped; period usage ranged from thin cream to heavy. A quart of pure heavy cream freezes very dense and rich, so replacing a cup of it with whole milk gives a texture closer to what most people now expect of ice cream.
- Dissolve the sugar firstThere is no cooked custard to carry the sugar, so whisk the 3/4 cup sugar and salt into a little of the cream until no grain remains before adding the rest. Undissolved sugar in a raw base gives a slightly gritty finish.
- The alcohol mattersA third of a cup of liqueur in a quart of cream measurably lowers the freezing point. Expect a soft set, and plan on several hours in the freezer after churning if you want it firm enough to unmould.
- ColoringPeriod "violet coloring" would have been a bottled dye of uncertain composition; the pounded petals themselves give only a faint gray-mauve. Use a drop or two of current food coloring, or skip it and accept a pale ice.
- Freezing and mouldingChurn in an ice cream maker until thick, then pack into a chilled mould and hold it in the freezer to set, which is what the original hand-crank-and-pack method achieved. Dip the mould briefly in warm water to turn it out.
- YieldAbout 1 1/2 quarts, or eight to ten small servings. It is intensely rich and sweet, and is best served in small portions with the candied violets the recipe suggests.