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Buttermilk Cream
One gallon buttermilk, yolks of eight eggs, and whites of four, well beaten; three pints sweet milk. Boil the sweet milk and pour on the eggs; then thicken, stirring all the time. When cool stir in the buttermilk slowly, season and sweeten to the taste, then freeze.--Mrs. D. R. CARAMEL CUSTARD (Frozen).
Make a rich custard, allowing a cup of nice brown sugar to every quart. Stew the sugar till it burns a little. The mix it with the custard while both are hot. Boil two sticks cinnamon in the custard.--Mrs. J. J. B.
Two frozen desserts run together in the original text, both written for a hand-crank freezer and both assuming a household with a great deal of milk on hand. The buttermilk cream is essentially a stirred custard let down with buttermilk and churned; the caramel custard that follows is a separate recipe from a different contributor.
- Scale it downA gallon of buttermilk plus three pints of sweet milk and eight yolks makes about five and a half quarts of base — enough for a large freezer and a large party. Quartering the recipe (1 quart buttermilk, 1½ cups milk, 2 yolks plus 1 white) fits a 1½-quart domestic machine.
- "Thicken" means cook the custardTemper the boiled milk into the beaten eggs, then return the mixture to low heat and stir until it coats a spoon, about 170–180°F. Past 185°F it scrambles; this is the step the recipe compresses into one word.
- Add the buttermilk cold and slowlyThe instruction "when cool stir in the buttermilk slowly" is the hinge. Buttermilk poured into a warm custard will curdle from the acid and heat together; chill the custard thoroughly first and stream the buttermilk in while whisking.
- Buttermilk has changedIn 1878 this was the liquid left from churning butter; where the cream had been allowed to ripen, as it often was, the buttermilk was already tangy, while sweet-cream churning gave a milder, thinner liquid. Supermarket buttermilk is cultured skim milk and thicker. Taste before deciding on sugar.
- "Season and sweeten to taste"No quantities are given because the cook was expected to judge. For a quart of finished base, start around ¾ cup sugar; season with grated nutmeg, lemon zest or a little vanilla, all period-appropriate. Dissolve the sugar into the hot custard rather than the cold buttermilk.
- Freezing"Then freeze" means packing a churn with ice and coarse salt and cranking. Any modern ice cream machine does the same work. The low fat content means it freezes hard and icy, so serve it soon after churning.
- The caramel custard"Stew the sugar till it burns a little" is caramelisation — melt the brown sugar and take it just past amber, then combine hot with hot to avoid seizing. It also says to boil two cinnamon sticks in the custard; strain them out before freezing.
Housekeeping in Old Virginia, compiled by Marion Cabell Tyree and published in 1878, is a collection of contributions from named Virginia housewives, which is why these two frozen desserts sit side by side under different initials. Recipes of this kind depended on two things a large Southern household of the period had and a city apartment did not: buttermilk in gallon quantities, left over from churning butter at home, and a supply of ice, either cut in winter and packed in an icehouse or bought from the commercial ice trade that had reached inland towns by the 1870s. Frozen creams built on buttermilk or clabbered milk were a thrifty use of a byproduct that would otherwise have gone to the biscuit dough or the pigs, and the sharpness that reads as fashionable now was simply what the ingredient tasted like.