Ice-Cream
ALL "MY CHOICE WOULD BE VANILLA ICE." -Holmes.
LL creams should be carefully mixed before putting into the can of the freezer. Be sure the can has been scalded and then cooled. Put the cream in the can, fasten down the gear and pack with ice and salt-three parts ice, crushed very fine, to one part of salt. Use Rock Salt always. The salt draws the heat from the ice and the briny water resulting is many degrees lower in temperature than the ice. This reduces the mixture to the freezing-point, and if the mixture is stirred evenly throughout the time of freezing, the result will be a smooth, fine-grained cream. Do not pour out the salty water and re-fill with ice. This is a mistake people often make.
Ice-cream made from pure cream is liked by so many people that we will give a formula for this kind.
VANILLA ICE-CREAM No. I One quart of whipping-cream One cup of sugar One teaspoon of Larkin Vanilla Flavoring Extract Whip the cream with a cream whip. Add sugar and flavoring, and freeze.
VANILLA ICE-CREAM No. 2 Soften one-quarter box or two dessert-spoons of Larkin Gelatine in one cup of milk. Scald the remainder of one quart of milk and pour over the Gelatine, adding one and one-half cups of sugar, one pint of cream, one teaspoon of Larkin Vanilla Flavoring Extract, and a quarter-teaspoon of Larkin Table Salt. Freeze, then re-pack and allow to ripen two hours, that the ingredients may be well blended.
CARAMEL ICE-CREAM No. I Bring the sugar to a caramel stage and add to the cream after it has been whipped, and freeze.
Three formulas sharing one set of instructions for a hand-crank freezer. The general notes at the top are the useful part, and they still apply to any bucket-style machine.
- The hinge: leave the brine aloneThe instruction not to drain the salty water and refill with ice is the single most important line here. The brine is what actually chills the can; ice alone sits at 32F and will never freeze the mixture. Top up with more ice and salt as it settles, but keep the liquid.
- Ice and salt proportionsThree parts crushed ice to one part rock salt by volume is still the standard for a bucket freezer. More salt freezes faster but coarser; this ratio is a reasonable compromise. Rock salt is specified because table salt dissolves too quickly and is wasteful at this scale.
- If you use a modern machineA frozen-canister or compressor churn needs none of the ice-and-salt discussion. Chill the mixture thoroughly in the refrigerator first, then churn 20 to 30 minutes.
- Do not whip the creamNo. 1 tells you to whip the cream before freezing. In a modern churn, which aerates on its own, pre-whipped cream tends to break into butter granules under the dasher. Pour it in liquid and cold.
- "One-quarter box" of gelatinePeriod gelatine came in boxes of several envelopes, and a quarter box is on the order of one modern envelope; the recipe's own "two dessert-spoons" (about four teaspoons) is the safer measure to work from. Bloom it in the cold cup of milk before the scalded milk goes over it.
- Larkin ingredientsLarkin Vanilla Flavoring Extract, Gelatine and Table Salt were the company's own mail-order goods; substitute any vanilla extract, unflavoured powdered gelatine and fine salt in the same amounts.
- RipeningThe two-hour rest for No. 2 is real and worth keeping. Repack the sealed can in fresh ice and salt, or move the churned ice cream to a covered container in the freezer, so the texture firms and the flavour settles.
- The caramel version is a sketchNo quantities are given. Work from No. 1 and caramelise the cup of sugar, then stir it into a little of the warm cream to dissolve before combining with the rest, or it will seize into hard threads in cold cream.
- YieldNo. 1 makes about 1 1/2 quarts; No. 2, with a quart of milk and a pint of cream, gives roughly 1 3/4 quarts of base and perhaps 2 to 2 1/2 quarts churned. Check your can's capacity and leave room for expansion.
The Larkin Company of Buffalo was a soap manufacturer that built an enormous mail-order business by giving away household goods with bulk orders, and it issued premium cookbooks; the branded Gelatine, extract and table salt named in every line are as much the point of the book as the ice cream is. The epigraph is credited only to "Holmes." The ice-and-salt method described here goes back to the hand-cranked freezer patented by Nancy Johnson in 1843, whose dasher-in-a-can design helped make ice cream a home dessert rather than a confectioner's specialty; commercial ice harvesting, then still a large winter industry in the northern states, is what put the packing ice within reach of an ordinary kitchen.