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Muskmelon Frappe
Remove the tops of small nutmeg melons so as to form a cover. Take out all the seeds and membrane and scoop out as much of the soft pulp as can easily be removed. Cut this latter into small pieces. Place the seeds and membrane into a sieve to drain the juice, then add the latter to one quart of whipped cream, sweetened; turn this into an ice cream freezer and turn until stiff. When ready to serve, take the shells, which should have been chilled on ice, place the frappe cream in alternate layers with the melon pulp. Fasten a narrow ribbon looped bow on the lids with long pins; set the melons on lace paper doilies and serve with cake. See Page XVII.
A frozen dessert built around the melon it is served in, from the era of the hand-cranked freezer. The instructions are loose on quantities, so a few decisions are yours.
- Nutmeg melonAn older American name for the small, heavily netted muskmelons of the reticulatus group — fragrant, and generally only a pound or two. Any small ripe cantaloupe works; choose fruit that is dense and heavy for its size, since watery melon will freeze into ice.
- "Frappe"In period usage this meant frozen to a soft, mushy stage rather than the modern blended drink, though this recipe does say to churn until stiff. Aim for a mixture thick enough to hold a spoon mark but still scoopable.
- A quart of whipped creamAmbiguous in the original. Read as a quart of heavy cream, whipped, which yields close to two quarts of foam and fills four to six melon shells; if you read it as a quart of whipped volume you will need about 2 cups of cream. Sweetening is also unspecified — start at 1/2 cup sugar per quart of cream and taste, remembering that freezing mutes sweetness.
- Draining the seedsThe seed mass and membrane hold a good deal of fragrant juice. Let it drain through a fine sieve without pressing hard, then strain again; seed fragments and pulp shreds will make the frozen cream gritty.
- Fold, do not stirAdd the strained juice to the whipped cream in a slow stream while folding. Melon juice is thin and watery, and dumping it in at once will slacken the cream so that it churns to a watery ice rather than a frappe.
- The freezerThe original means a bucket freezer packed with cracked ice and rock salt, cranked until stiff. An electric ice cream machine does the same job in 15 to 25 minutes. Without a machine, freeze in a shallow metal pan and beat with a whisk every 30 minutes until it sets — a churned-in air content is what keeps it soft.
- The cut pulpKeep the diced melon cold but unfrozen; frozen chunks turn to hard ice and weep as they thaw. Pat the pieces dry before layering so their juice does not thin the cream in the shell.
- Assembly and servingChill the hollowed shells thoroughly, then layer and serve at once — cream in a room-temperature melon shell slumps within minutes. Ribbon and long pins are period table dressing; remove them before the melons reach the table if children are eating.