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Frozen Pudding
Forty blanched almonds pounded rather fine, one ounce citron cut in small squares, two ounces currants, two ounces raisins stoned and divided. Soak all in two wine-glasses wine, all night. Make custard of a pint of cream or milk. If cream, use yolks of four eggs; if milk, yolks of eight eggs. Make a syrup of one pound white sugar and a pint of water. When nearly boiling, put in the fruit and wine and boil one minute. When cool, mix with the custard. Whip whites of the eggs to a stiff froth, and add to the custard and syrup after they are mixed. Add last a wine-glass of brandy.--Miss E. W.
A rich frozen custard in the tutti-frutti line, written for a hand-crank freezer packed with ice and salt. The original never says to freeze it, because in 1878 nobody needed telling.
- Wine-glassAbout 2 fluid ounces, so two wine-glasses of wine is roughly 1/2 cup and the final brandy another 1/4 cup. Sherry or Madeira suits the fruit better than a dry table wine.
- The almondsForty blanched almonds come to about 1 1/2 ounces, a scant 1/3 cup. Pound or pulse them coarsely; a fine flour-like grind turns the pudding gritty rather than nutty.
- CitronCandied citron peel, sold at holiday baking counters and by mail. Candied lemon or orange peel is the usual substitute, though it is sweeter and less resinous.
- Cook the custard properlyYolks and cream taken to 170-175F over low heat, stirring, until it coats a spoon. Above about 180F it curdles, and once frozen the graininess cannot be hidden.
- Raw whitesThe beaten whites are folded in cold and never heated again. Use pasteurized whites in a carton, or a meringue whipped with a little of the hot syrup, if raw egg is a concern in your household.
- The syrup is enormousA pound of sugar to a pint of water is a heavy syrup, and combined with a pint of custard it gives a sweet, soft-setting mixture closer to a semifreddo than to modern ice cream. Cutting the syrup by about a third should give a firmer result, at the cost of some sweetness.
- Alcohol and freezingThree-quarters of a cup of wine and brandy in this volume depresses the freezing point noticeably. Churn in an ice cream machine, then harden at 0F for several hours; expect it to stay scoopable and to soften fast at the table.
- One minute means one minuteThe fruit goes into the near-boiling syrup only to plump and to carry the wine through; longer boiling toughens the currants and drives off more of the alcohol.
- YieldRoughly 1 1/2 quarts, serving eight to ten.
Housekeeping in Old Virginia (1878), compiled by Marion Cabell Tyree from contributions credited by initial or married name, includes among its desserts a frozen pudding. "Frozen pudding" was one of several nineteenth-century American names for an ice cream studded with candied fruit, nuts and soaked dried fruit, generally traced to the French plombi u00e8res and Nesselrode traditions and served as the grand close to a dinner. The pound of sugar and the pint of water are doing more than sweetening: sugar and alcohol together keep such a mixture from setting bone-hard in a salt-and-ice pail. The recipe also allows cream with four yolks or milk with eight.