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Fruit Ice-Cream
Using either of the Vanilla Ice-Cream recipes any fruit may be added to the mixture when the dasher is taken out, always modifying the flavoring to suit the added fruit.
This is a variation note rather than a standalone recipe: it tells you where in the freezing process to add fruit to a vanilla base. The timing is the whole point of it.
- "When the dasher is taken out"The dasher is the paddle of a hand-crank freezer. Estes means you add the fruit after churning is finished, when the cream is thick but still soft, then pack the can back in ice and salt to ripen and harden. In a modern machine, fold the fruit in as you transfer the churned cream to a container for the freezer.
- Why not add it earlierFruit pulp churned from the start dilutes the base and its water freezes into grit. Folding it in at the end keeps the fruit in distinct ribbons and the cream smooth.
- How much fruitThe original gives no quantity. About 1 to 1 1/2 cups of sweetened fruit purée or crushed fruit per quart of finished ice cream is the usual working range; much more and the mixture freezes hard and icy.
- Macerate and sweeten firstToss berries, peaches or cherries with a few tablespoons of sugar and let them stand 30 minutes, then crush or chop small. Unsweetened fruit freezes into hard shards; sugar keeps it soft enough to bite through.
- "Modifying the flavoring"With fruit added, cut the vanilla in the base by half or more — a full measure fights strawberry or peach. A spoonful of lemon juice in the fruit sharpens it and keeps the color from turning brown.
- Fruits to avoid in a custard baseFresh pineapple, kiwi and papaya contain protease enzymes that break down dairy and egg proteins, leaving a thin, slightly bitter cream. Cook or use canned fruit for these.
- HardeningStraight from the machine the cream is too soft to scoop. Give it two to three hours in the freezer, or an hour or two packed in ice and salt if you are working the old way.
Good Things to Eat (1911) was written by Rufus Estes, born enslaved in Tennessee in 1857, who cooked on Pullman private cars and later for the subsidiary of a Chicago steel company — one of the earliest cookbooks published by an African American author. A note like this one, cross-referencing two vanilla bases rather than repeating them, is the mark of a professional writing for people who already understand the equipment: the hand-cranked ice-and-salt freezer, patented in the 1840s and a fixture of American kitchens by the 1870s, made ice cream a home dessert rather than a confectioner's luxury. Fruit ices and fruit creams were the summer end of that trade, tied to whatever was ripe, and cooks were expected to adjust the flavoring by taste rather than by a printed formula.