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Gelatine Ice Cream
Soak one-half package of Cox's gelatine in a pint of morning's milk. Boil three pints of milk, and while hot, pour on the gelatine, stirring till dissolved. When cold, add two quarts of cream, and sweeten and season to your taste. Then freeze. It is improved by whipping the cream before freezing.--Miss E. T.
An eggless ice cream that leans on gelatine for body instead of a cooked custard. The proportions are generous even for a large household, and the seasoning is left entirely to the cook.
- The hinge: dissolve, then chill hardThe gelatine must be fully dissolved in the hot milk with no grains left, and the base then chilled thoroughly, ideally overnight. Gelatine that is only partly dissolved shows up as rubbery threads in the frozen cream.
- Cox's gelatine, half a packageCox's was sold in small boxes, and period recipes generally treat 'half a package' as somewhere around ½ oz, though package sizes varied and no exact weight can be pinned down. Older gelatines were generally weaker and less consistent than modern powder; with today's product, two ¼ oz envelopes for this full quantity is about the outside limit, and less gives a softer, cleaner result.
- Morning's milkMilk from that day's milking, whole and unskimmed, with the cream still in it. Whole milk is the modern equivalent.
- YieldTwo quarts of milk and two quarts of cream make a full gallon of base, and more once churned, enough for twenty or more. Quartering the recipe brings it within the range of a domestic machine.
- Sweeten and seasonNo quantity is given. Reckon on about 1 cup of sugar per quart of finished base, stirred into the hot milk so it dissolves, plus vanilla, or the lemon, almond or peach-leaf flavourings common in this book.
- If the base setsA gelatine base left overnight may firm up in the bowl. Whisk or blend it smooth before it goes into the freezer; a set base will churn unevenly.
- FreezingThe original means a hand-crank churn packed with ice and rock salt. In an ice-cream machine, churn the cold base straight; if you are still-freezing in a tray, whip the cream as the recipe suggests and fold it in.
Housekeeping in Old Virginia (1878), compiled by Marion Cabell Tyree from contributions by Virginia housekeepers, credits its recipes by initial, and "Miss E. T." is one of dozens of such anonymous hands. Commercial gelatine — Cox's, from Edinburgh, was among the brands advertised in nineteenth-century America — made a considerable difference to home cooks, replacing the long labour of boiling down calves' feet for a jelly stock. Here it does the work an egg custard would otherwise do, giving body to a frozen cream without the trouble and risk of cooking a custard over a fire. Ice cream in this quantity also says something about the household the book was written for: a gallon of it presumes an ice house or a regular ice delivery, a churn, rock salt, and the hands to turn the crank.