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Fig Ice Cream
Take two tablespoons of gelatine, scald one cup of milk and one cup of vinegar, then add the gelatine, let it dissolve and add one quart of rich cream and freeze.
When frozen, add one-fourth pound of chopped figs and one-half pound of chopped English walnuts. Let stand until ready to serve. Mrs Charles M.
Ransom.
A hand-cranked churn recipe from the era when gelatine was the household stabilizer. One ingredient in it almost certainly reached print in error, so read the first two points before you start.
- The vinegar is the problemA cup of vinegar scalded with a cup of milk will curdle it on contact, and nothing in the rest of the method addresses that. The recipe also contains no sugar at all, which has led some readers to suspect a misprint for a cup of sugar; that is only a guess, and there is no evidence for it beyond the oddity of the line itself. Either way, treat the vinegar as unreliable rather than as a technique.
- GelatineTwo tablespoons is close to three envelopes, about two-thirds of an ounce, of modern powdered gelatine — a heavy hand by current standards for this volume of cream. One envelope is enough to keep the texture smooth. Soften it in a little cold liquid before dissolving.
- "Rich cream"Heavy or whipping cream, 36 percent fat or above. A quart of it plus a cup of milk gives a very rich base; half cream and half whole milk churns more easily in a domestic machine.
- FreezingThe original assumes a bucket freezer packed with cracked ice and coarse salt, cranked until the dasher stalls. In an ice-cream maker, churn the chilled gelatine base until it is the consistency of soft-serve.
- When to add the figs and nuts"When frozen, add" means folded in while the ice cream is still soft, then hardened — not stirred into a solid block. A quarter pound of dried figs is about three-quarters of a cup chopped; half a pound of walnuts is close to two cups, which will dominate. Half that quantity of nuts suits most palates.
- English walnutsThe ordinary Persian walnut sold everywhere today. The term distinguished it from the American black walnut, which is stronger and more bitter.
- Softening the figsDried figs of this period were often quite hard. Chopping them fine, or steeping them briefly in warm water or a spoonful of brandy and draining well, keeps them from freezing into gritty pebbles.
- Yield and holdingAbout a quart and a half, or eight to ten servings. "Let stand until ready to serve" means hardening in the packed freezer for an hour or two; in a home freezer, cover the surface closely and give it at least four hours.
Household ice cream of this period had no commercial stabilizers to draw on, so cooks improvised with what was in the pantry: gelatine, cornstarch, arrowroot, or a boiled custard base. Gelatine held the water in suspension and kept a hand-churned quart from turning to coarse ice as it sat in the salt bucket waiting for dinner. Dried figs and walnuts were both pantry staples rather than luxuries by 1900 — Smyrna figs arrived pressed in boxes, and California walnut orchards had brought the price of "English" walnuts within reach — which is why they turn up so often in the frozen-dessert chapters of American cookbooks. The signature indicates a recipe contributed under a reader's name, which accounts both for the informal phrasing and for the occasional garbled ingredient.