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Chocolate Ice Cream
Half a pound sweet chocolate, twelve eggs, one gallon milk, two tablespoonfuls arrow-root, sugar and vanilla to the taste. Dissolve the chocolate in one pint and a half boiled milk. Whip the eggs. Mix the arrow-root in a little cold milk, and add to the eggs. Then pour on one gallon boiled milk, and put on the fire to thicken. When cool, season and freeze.--Mrs. D. R. Chocolate Ice Cream.
Three quarts milk, eight eggs, six ounces chocolate dissolved in a pint of boiling water, three heaping tablespoonfuls arrow-root well mixed in cold milk, one pound and a half of brown sugar, vanilla to the taste. Made like custard, and boiled very thick.--Miss D. D.
Chocolate Ice Cream.
One quart morning's milk, one-quarter of a pound chocolate, one teaspoonful vanilla, sugar to the taste. Boil as for table use. When ready to freeze, whip in one quart rich cream.
Three separate contributions, printed one after another, ranging from a heavy arrowroot-thickened custard to a nearly plain Philadelphia-style cream. All were made in a hand-cranked ice-and-salt freezer, and all are sized for a household, not a family of four.
- YieldThe first version, on a gallon of milk (it is not clear whether the pint and a half for the chocolate is part of that gallon or additional), makes something in the region of four to five quarts of finished ice cream. The second is of a similar order, the third about two. Scale down to suit a home machine.
- Sweet chocolateIn 1878 this meant a solid chocolate already sweetened, coarser and less refined than modern couverture. A dark eating chocolate is the nearest match, though period sweet chocolate was probably lower in cacao and sweeter than a 50-60% bar; if you use unsweetened baking chocolate, which is probably what bare "chocolate" means in the second and third versions, expect to add considerably more sugar.
- ArrowrootTwo to three tablespoons in a gallon of custard acts as a stabiliser rather than a pudding thickener. It probably earns its place because starch gives the custard some insurance against curdling and because starch helps keep ice crystals small in a slow, hand-cranked freeze. Cornstarch behaves similarly.
- "Boiled very thick"Take this as period license. Even with arrowroot in it, the eight-egg custard of the second version should be cooked to about 175-180F over gentle heat and pulled the moment it coats a spoon; a true rolling boil will give you sweet chocolate scrambled egg. Strain it before chilling.
- Morning's milkIn the third recipe this means milk from the morning milking, unhomogenised and with the cream not yet risen and skimmed. Whole milk is the substitute, and the quart of "rich cream" whipped in at the end should be heavy cream.
- Brown sugarA pound and a half of brown sugar in the second version is not an error to be corrected to refined white sugar; nineteenth-century brown sugar carried real molasses flavour and will taste of it. Light brown sugar is the nearest thing.
- "Season" and "sugar to the taste"Season here means flavour, not salt. Taste the base cold, before churning, and oversweeten slightly: freezing mutes sugar and vanilla noticeably.
- FreezingChill the base thoroughly overnight before it goes into the machine. The original assumed a spell of cranking in rock salt and ice, which incorporated air; a modern churn does the same work in twenty to thirty minutes.
Housekeeping in Old Virginia (1878), compiled by Marion Cabell Tyree, was built from contributions solicited from Virginia housewives, which is why three chocolate ice creams sit side by side over one another's initials rather than being edited into a single authoritative version. The book is a useful record precisely because of that duplication: you can watch the same dish being made three ways in three kitchens. Ice cream had a long history in Virginia by then, with Jefferson's Monticello recipes among the frequently cited early American examples, but it stayed a labour-intensive luxury until cheap ice and the hand-cranked freezer, generally credited to a patent of the 1840s, brought it within reach of any household with a strong-armed helper. The gallon-scale quantities here reflect that: once someone had committed to twenty minutes of cranking, you made enough to matter.