Home › Creams, Jellies and Cold Sweets › Strawberry Cream Ice
Strawberry Cream Ice
Ingredients.
One pound of Strawberries.
Three ounces of Castor Sugar.
One teaspoonful of Cochineal.
One tablespoonful of Lemon-juice.
Half a pint of whipped Cream.
Remove the stalks from strawberries; rub them through a fine hair-sieve, with wooden spoon; add the cochineal and lemon-juice. This should measure half a pint. Add to this the whipped cream, and freeze. When well frozen, pack tightly in a wetted ice mould, and return to the ice till required for table.
A simple uncooked fruit ice, but the method leaves two things out: when to add the sugar, and how to freeze it without a Victorian pot freezer.
- The missing sugarThe ingredient list gives three ounces of castor sugar but the method never mentions it. Stir it into the sieved purée with the lemon juice and let it dissolve fully before the cream goes in — sugar added after freezing begins will stay gritty.
- Castor sugarSuperfine or caster sugar, ground finer than granulated so it dissolves in cold liquid. Three ounces is about 6 to 7 tablespoons. Granulated will work if you give it ten minutes to dissolve and stir it well.
- Half a pintAn Imperial pint is 20 fluid ounces, so half a pint is 10 fl oz, roughly 1¼ US cups. That applies both to the purée and to the cream, and the finished quantity is a little over a pint of ice — four modest servings.
- CochinealA red colouring extracted from scale insects, sold then as a liquid tincture. It is still available as carmine or cochineal extract, and it is purely cosmetic here — omit it and the ice is a pale pink rather than a bright one.
- SievingA fine hair sieve and wooden spoon produce a seedless purée. A food mill or a blitz in a blender followed by a nylon sieve does the same job faster; a metal sieve is fine now that carbon steel is not the standard.
- Whipped creamWhip to soft peaks only. Stiffly whipped cream folded into cold purée sets in lumps and gives a churned ice a buttery texture.
- FreezingChurn in an ice-cream machine for 20-25 minutes. Without one, freeze in a shallow tray and beat thoroughly with a fork every 30 minutes for about three hours — no eggs and no cooked base means this mixture ices coarsely if left undisturbed.
- The mouldWetting the mould is what lets the ice turn out cleanly; do it, then press the ice in with no air pockets and freeze until firm. Dip the mould briefly in warm water to unmould, and let the ice stand a few minutes before serving — a modern home freezer runs colder than a Victorian ice cave and will make it rock hard.
Cream ices were a familiar finish to a formal Victorian dinner, and the books of the period distinguish carefully between a water ice (fruit and syrup), a cream ice (fruit or flavouring with cream) and a fully custard-based iced pudding. This one belongs to the simplest class: no cooking at all, just raw fruit, sugar, acid and cream turned in a pot freezer packed with crushed ice and coarse salt, which is why the instruction ends with returning the mould "to the ice till required for table" rather than to a freezer. The teaspoonful of cochineal is a reminder of how much Victorian cookery relied on colour at the table han momoment they are sieved, and the reddening was expected in a dish meant to be turned out whole and looked at. Lemon juice does double duty, sharpening flavour that cream would otherwise flatten and helping stabilise the red anthocyanins of the fruit. Do not read the absence of eggs as economy; it is simply what the simplest class of cream ice required.