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Rose Roll
A dainty cream is the rose roll shown in the illustration. Make one quart of ice cream from any foundation, flavor with one teaspoon of vanilla, one-half tablespoon of rose, color a delicate pink, freeze and line a pound baking powder can, fill center with a chocolate usse mixture made by dissolving one tablespoon of granulated gelatine in one-fourth cup of hot water, add three-fourths cup of powdered sugar and one tablespoon of vanilla; when cool fold in whip from two cups of cream. Cover the top with lining mixture and pack for two hours. Unmold on lace paper, garnish with a pink rosebud and candied rose leaves. See Page XXII.
A moulded frozen bombe of the sort Good Housekeeping liked to photograph: pink ice cream lining a cylinder, a gelatine-set cream mousse in the middle. The text has a few printer's slips and one silent omission worth sorting out before you start.
- "Chocolate usse" is chocolate mousseA typesetting error for mousse. Note also that no chocolate appears anywhere in the ingredient list — add 2 oz melted and cooled unsweetened chocolate, or 3 tablespoons cocoa dissolved with the gelatine, or the centre will be plain vanilla.
- A pound baking powder canA cylindrical tin, taller than it is wide, and smaller than you might expect; a one-pound tin holds well under a quart, so you will likely need a larger mould for the full quantity. Any tall straight-sided mould, a coffee tin, or a cardboard tube lined with plastic wrap gives the same tall round slice.
- Rose flavouringHalf a tablespoon is a lot of anything rose-scented. If your bottle is rose water, that quantity is about right; if it is concentrated rose extract or rose oil, start with a scant quarter teaspoon and taste — over-roses cream tastes of soap.
- Granulated gelatineOne tablespoon is about one and a third modern envelopes (an envelope is 2¼ teaspoons). Soften it in the quarter cup of water first, then warm to dissolve; adding dry granules to hot water leaves lumps that will not melt out.
- ColouringPink at this period would most likely have come from cochineal or carmine. A drop or two of modern liquid or gel colour does the same job; add it before freezing, since the ice cream will be too stiff to blend evenly afterwards.
- Lining the mouldThe hinge of the whole thing. Freeze the ice cream to a firm, spreadable state — not soupy, not rock hard — chill the tin first, and press an even half-inch layer up the sides with the back of a cold spoon. Refreeze the shell for 20 minutes before you pour in the mousse, or the two will marble together.
- "Pack for two hours"This means burying the sealed tin in a tub of cracked ice and coarse salt. In a home freezer, allow four hours at minimum and overnight for a clean slice.
- UnmouldingWring a cloth out in hot water and wrap the tin for ten to fifteen seconds, then invert. Do not dip in hot water, which glazes and slumps the pink surface.
- Candied rose leavesIn period usage these are rose petals brushed with egg white and caster sugar and dried, not the foliage. Fresh untreated petals from an unsprayed bush are the only ones worth using.
- YieldA quart of ice cream plus a mousse made from two cups of cream whipped, which comes to more than a single pound can will hold; expect leftovers or use a larger mould. Slice count depends on the mould you use.
Moulded frozen creams like this one are the domestic descendant of the French bombe glacée, a shell of one ice cream lining a mould with a richer, softer mixture set in the centre — the contrast of the two, revealed in cross-section, was the entire point. Rose was still a live dessert flavour in American kitchens at the turn of the twentieth century, a survival of the older English and Near Eastern taste for floral distillates that vanilla and chocolate would largely displace. The baking powder can as a mould tells you as much about the period as the flavouring does: purpose-made tin bombe moulds were a specialist purchase, and the tall cylindrical tins every pantry already held could be pressed into service instead. "Packing" refers to the ice-and-rock-salt method that preceded mechanical refrigeration, in which a sealed mould was buried in a salted ice bath for a couple of hours to ripen and firm — the same technique used to finish hand-cranked ice cream.