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Walnut and Fig Ice Cream
Heat two and a half cups of milk, having reserved cold half a cup to mix with the other ingredients. A part of this half cup of cold milk use for dissolving a tablespoon of gelatine and with the rest mix two tablespoons of flour, an egg and a cup of sugar. Into the milk, heating in a double boiler, stir gradually the flour, sugar and egg. When it has come to a custard, add the dissolved gelatine, a cup of rich cream and a teaspoon of vanilla. After you have frozen the mixture add the meats of half a pound of English walnuts, weighed in the shell, and a quarter of a pound of figs. The walnuts and figs should be well chopped. Beat them well in the custard and pack. -Mrs George D. Hale.
A gelatine-stabilized custard base, typical of turn-of-the-century American ice creams made in a hand-crank freezer. The one thing to get right is the custard: cook it until it thickens and coats a spoon (about 175F) but never let it boil, or the egg will scramble and the flour will taste raw-pasty if you stop too soon.
- GelatineOne tablespoon of granulated gelatine is roughly one and a quarter envelopes of modern powdered gelatin. Soften it in a few tablespoons of the cold milk for five minutes before stirring it into the hot custard, and stir until no grains remain.
- Rich creamThis would have meant a high-fat cream rather than thin table cream, though period standards varied. Use heavy or whipping cream; today's "light cream" or half-and-half will give a thinner, icier result.
- Walnuts weighed in the shellHalf a pound of English walnuts in the shell yields about 3 1/2 to 4 ounces of nutmeats, a scant cup chopped. Buy shelled walnuts and weigh that amount rather than the full half pound.
- FigsA quarter pound of dried figs, stems trimmed. If they are hard, steep them in hot water for ten minutes and pat dry before chopping, or they will freeze into gravel.
- Chill before churningThe recipe omits it, but the custard must be cold, ideally refrigerated several hours, before it goes into the freezer. Churning a warm base gives coarse ice crystals.
- Freezing and "packing"The original assumes a churn packed with cracked ice and rock salt, roughly four parts ice to one of salt. In a modern machine, churn to a soft-serve consistency, fold in the nuts and figs at the end, then transfer to a container and firm up in the freezer for two to four hours.
- YieldThe liquid alone comes to a quart; with the sugar, nuts and figs the finished ice cream is nearer a quart and a half.
Gelatine and a little flour appear in a great many American ice creams of this period, most likely for a practical reason: a hand-cranked freezer produced a coarse and quickly-melting cream, and both ingredients helped hold the mixture together in the interval between packing and serving. The recipe's instruction to weigh walnuts in the shell suggests shelled nuts were not yet a routine purchase; "English walnuts" distinguished the thin-shelled Persian walnut -- imported, and by this date also grown in California -- from the native black walnut, which was more often gathered than bought. Dried figs, largely Smyrna figs shipped from Ottoman Turkey, were a common pantry sweet in this period and turn up regularly in puddings and frozen desserts. The recipe carries a signed contributor's attribution, to Mrs George D. Hale.