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Frozen Desserts: Cream
Arrowroot Cream. 1 pint cream, 1 quart milk, 1½ cupfuls sugar, tablespoonfuls arrowroot, tablespoonful Mellhenny's Mexican Vanilla.
Moisten the arrowroot with a little milk; put the remainder in a double boiler; when hot, add the arrowroot, stir and cook ten minutes, add the sugar, take from the fire, add the cream and vanilla. When cold, freeze Gelatin Cream. 1 quart cream 1 pint milk, cupfuls sugar, 1 box gelatin, tablespoonfuls Mcilhenny's Mexican Vanilla.
Cover the gelatin with the milk and stand in a cool place thirty minutes; put it in a double boiler; when hot, add the sugar, strain, add the cream and vanilla, and freeze.
Caramel Cream. 1 quart cream, 1 cupful sugar, eggs, tablespoonfuls caramel, teaspoonful McIlhenny's Mexican Vanilla.
Beat the yolks of eggs and the sugar together until light. Whisk the whites to a stiff froth, stir them into the yolks and sugar. Scald the cream, then stir and cook until the mixture begins to thicken. Take from the fire, and strain; when cold, add the vanilla, and freeze.
Almond Cream, Yolks 6 eggs, 1 quart cream, 2 ounces Jordan almonds, 1½ cupfuls sugar.
Blanch the almonds and chop them fine. Put 2 tablespoonfuls granulated sugar with the chopped almonds in a saucepan, stir over the fire until the almonds are red brown, take from the fire and when cool, pound them to a paste. Put the cream in a double boiler. Beat the eggs and sugar together until light, add to the hot cream, stir until thickened, take from the fire, add the pounded almonds, and freeze.
Brown-Bread Ice Cream. 2 slices brown bread, cupful sugar, lady's fingers, 1 pint milk, 1 pint cream.
Put the bread in the oven and brown, roll, and sift. Dry and roll the lady's fingers. Put the cream, milk, and sugar in a double boiler, and stir until the sugar is dissolved; when cold, freeze. When frozen, add the sifted crumbs, and repack.
Raspberry-Jam Cream.
1 pound raspberry jam Juice 1 lemon, → pint cream, 1 gill milk.
Mix the lemon juice with the raspberry jam, add gradually the milk and cream, strain through a sieve, and freeze.
Burnt-Almond Cream. 1 quart cream, 1 cupful sugar, 4 ounces shelled almonds, MRS. CURTIS'S COOKBOOK 1 teaspoonful caramel, 1 tablespoonful McIlhenny's Mexican Vanilla.
Blanch and roast the almonds, then pound them in a mortar to a paste.
Put half the cream and the sugar on to boil, stir until the sugar is dissolved, add the remaining pint of cream and the almonds; when cold, add the caramel and vanilla; freeze.
Chocolate Cream. 2 cupfuls scalded milk, 1 tablespoonful flour, 1 egg, cupful boiling water, 1½ cupfuls sugar, teaspoonful salt, 2 squares Runkel's Chocolate 1 quart thin cream, 1 teaspoonful McIlhenny's Mexican Vanilla.
Mix 1 cupful sugar with the flour and salt. Add the egg slightly beaten, and gradually the milk. Cook over hot water twenty minutes, stirring constantly at first. Put chocolate in saucepan, place over hot water, and when melted, add remaining sugar and boiling water. Add chocolate mixture to hot custard. Cool, add cream and flavoring, strain and freeze. One third cupful Runkel's Prepared Cocoa may be used in place of chocolate.
Apricot Cream. 1 quart cream, 1½ cupfuls sugar, 1 quart apricots or 1 pint can.
Put half the cream to heat in a double boiler. When hot, add the sugar, and stir until dissolved. Take from the fire, add the remaining half of the cream, and when cold, freeze.
Mash the apricots and stir them quickly into the frozen cream; turn the crank rapidly for five minutes; pack.
Banana Cream. 8 bananas, 1 quart cream, 1 cupful cream.
Peel and mash the bananas. Put 1 pint cream to scald in a double boiler. When hot, add the sugar, stir until dissolved, and cool. Beat and stir the bananas to a smooth paste, add to the cream and sugar; then add the remainder of cream, and freeze.
Mandarin Cream. 1 quart cream, 1 cupful sugar, Juice 12 mandarins, Rind 2 mandarins.
Put half the cream to scald in a double boiler, add the sugar, and stir until dissolved. When cool, add the juice and rind of mandarins and the remaining half of cream; freeze.
Raspberry Cream. 1 quart cream, 2 cupfuls sugar, 1 quart raspberries, Juice 1 lemon.
Put half the sugar and cream to boil; when sugar is dissolved, cool; add the rest of sugar and lemon juice to the berries, stand an hour, then strain. Add the remaining half of the cream to the sweetened cream, and freeze; when frozen, stir in the fruit juice, beat thoroughly, and pack.
Peach Cream. 1 quart cream, 1 peck peaches, 1½ cupfuls sugar, 1 lemon.
Scald 1 quart thin cream and 1 cupful sugar; when cold, freeze to a mush, then add 1½ cupfuls peach pulp, mixed with cupful sugar, and the juice of lemon; finish freezing Blackberry Ice Cream. 1 quart milk, 1 quart blackberries, 1 lemon, 1 pint double cream, 1 cupful sugar, 1 tablespoonful cornstarch FROZEN DESSERTS Stir cornstarch, mixed with the sugar, into the milk, which has been previously scalded. Cook until the mixture thickens. The mixture will be as thick as thin cream. Add the cream, and when cold, freeze to a mush. A tablespoonful lemon extract may be added before freezing. Crush a basket of ripe, juicy blackberries, and press through a purée sieve to remove the seeds. Mix the pulpy juice, of which there should be a pint, with a cupful sugar, and set on the ice to chill. Add to the halffrozen mixture, and finish freezing. PARFAIT, MOUSSE, AND FROZEN PUDDING Apricot Pudding. 1 quart cream, Yolks 4 eggs, 1½ cupfuls sugar, 12 apricots.
A run of ice-cream bases from the era of the hand-crank freezer, when "freeze" meant twenty minutes of turning a dasher in a bucket of cracked ice and rock salt. Several of the formulas here are simply sweetened cream, custard, or fruit purée in different proportions, and they behave in a modern machine with almost no adjustment.
- "Freeze" means churnThese assume a dasher freezer packed with cracked ice and coarse salt; period manuals commonly give roughly three parts ice to one of salt, though the recipes themselves say nothing about it. In an electric machine, chill the base thoroughly (below 40F, overnight is better) before it goes in, or it will never set. "Freeze to a mush" is the soft stage at which fruit puree gets folded in; "pack" meant repacking the freezer in ice and salt to ripen -- in a modern kitchen, transfer to a container and firm it in the freezer for a few hours.
- Cream grades"thin cream" of the period is closer to today's light cream, around 18 percent fat, rather than half-and-half. "Double cream" means a rich, heavy cream. Where the recipes say plain "cream," heavy or whipping cream is the safe reading; using all heavy cream throughout gives a denser result than these formulas suggest.
- A gillHalf a cup, four fluid ounces. It appears in the raspberry-jam cream.
- Custard temperatureFor the caramel and almond creams, the eggs and sugar go into hot cream and are cooked "until thickened." Take that to 170-175F on a thermometer and stop; past 180F the yolks curdle and no amount of straining will save the texture. Temper by adding a ladle of the hot cream to the eggs first, not the reverse.
- "Caramel" is a syrupThe tablespoonful of caramel called for is burnt-sugar coloring and flavoring — sugar melted to a dark mahogany and let down with a little boiling water — not caramel candy or sauce. A commercial burnt-sugar syrup works.
- Brand ingredientsMcIlhenny's Mexican Vanilla and Runkel's chocolate were commercial products of the day; use any good vanilla extract and unsweetened baking chocolate at one ounce per "square." Runkel's prepared cocoa may well have been a sweetened preparation rather than plain cocoa powder, so taste the base and adjust the sugar if you substitute.
- Jordan almonds and gelatin boxesJordan almonds are the large, flat sweet almonds, traditionally Spanish, sold plain -- not the sugar-shelled confection. A "box" of gelatin of this date is usually taken as about an ounce of granulated gelatin, roughly four modern quarter-ounce envelopes, but box sizes were not standardised; that quantity gives a firm set, and half will give a smoother frozen cream.
- Lady's fingersPeriod lady's fingers were sponge fingers; the recipe's instruction to dry them before rolling suggests something softer than the crisp Italian savoiardi, though the dry biscuit will serve. They are crushed with the browned, sifted brown-bread crumbs, and sifting keeps coarse pieces from going soggy.
- YieldA base of one quart cream plus a pint or quart of milk is two to three quarts of liquid before churning, so expect a large batch. Most modern machines hold a quart and a half at most, so plan on churning in batches.
- Quantities to verifySeveral of these ingredient lists have lost their numbers — the arrowroot, gelatin and chocolate creams among them — and the peach cream's fruit quantity in the list does not match the pulp measure in the method. Follow the amounts given in the written method where the two disagree, and treat the vanilla and thickener quantities as a tablespoon or less until confirmed.
Ice cream became a home undertaking rather than a confectioner's luxury once the crank freezer with an inner can and revolving dasher spread through American kitchens in the second half of the nineteenth century; by 1900 a household with an ice supply could make three quarts in half an hour of arm work. That abundance explains the sheer variety on this page — arrowroot, gelatin and cornstarch bases sit beside egg custards because each solved the same problem of keeping cream smooth without a modern continuous freezer, the starches and gelatin standing in for yolks in households economizing on eggs. The named brands woven into the ingredient lists are worth noticing: McIlhenny's vanilla and Runkel's chocolate appear by name in the text rather than as generic ingredients. Mandarin and apricot creams also mark the moment when canned and imported fruit reached ordinary American pantries year-round.