Peach Cream
Take nice, soft peaches, perfectly ripe. Pare and chop fine, make them very sweet, and mash to a fine jam. To each quart of peaches, add one pint of cream and one pint of rich milk. Mix well and freeze. If you cannot get cream, melt an ounce of Cox's gelatine in a cup of water. Boil the milk, pour it on the gelatine, and when cold, mix with the peaches.--L. D. L. Peach Cream.
To two quarts of rich, sweet cream, add two teacups of sugar. Whip to a stiff froth with a patent egg-whip, one with a wheel, if convenient; if not, use the common egg-whip. Then peel soft, ripe peaches till you have about two quarts. As you peel, sprinkle over them two teacups powdered white sugar. Mash quickly with a silver tablespoon, or run through a colander, if the fruit is not soft and ripe. Then stir into the whipped cream, and pour into the freezer, reserving about one-fourth to add when the cream begins to sink in freezing. When you add the remainder, first cut down the frozen cream from the sides of the freezer. Beat hard with a strong iron spoon, whenever the freezer is opened to cut down the cream, till it becomes too hard. This beating and cutting down is required only for the common freezer, the patent freezer needing nothing of the kind.
Tie over the freezer large newspapers, to exclude the air, and set aside till wanted.
Apricot cream may be made exactly by this receipt.--Mrs. S. T.
Two contributors' versions of frozen peach cream, both written for a hand-cranked ice-and-salt freezer. The instructions assume you know how to pack and turn one; what follows fills in the rest.
- The hinge: sugar the peaches and mash them finePeach flesh is mostly water, and any chunk large enough to hold water freezes into an ice shard. Sugaring as you peel draws out juice and lowers the freezing point of what remains, which is why the first receipt asks for fruit made "very sweet" and mashed "to a fine jam" rather than diced, and the second sugars the fruit as it is peeled and mashes it quickly.
- Teacups and quartsA teacup in this book runs about 6 fl oz, so two teacups of sugar is roughly 1 1/2 cups by modern measure, on the order of 300 g. The second version, with two quarts of cream and two quarts of fruit, yields something like a gallon of finished ice cream; halve it for a domestic machine.
- Cox's gelatineCox's was a gelatine sold by the Edinburgh firm of J. & G. Cox, and its strength is unlikely to have matched that of modern powdered gelatine ounce for ounce, though the comparison cannot be made precisely. If you take the dairy-free route, treat one ounce as a maximum and expect a set custard-like body rather than true ice cream; too much gives a bouncy, gummy freeze.
- "Melt in a cup of water"Modern powdered gelatine wants soaking in cold water first, then dissolving in the hot boiled milk. Adding it dry to hot liquid gives lumps that never disperse.
- The silver tablespoonNot affectation. Iron and unlined tin discolour cut peaches on contact; silver, and now stainless steel or a plastic scraper, does not.
- Common freezer versus patent freezerThe "common freezer" is a plain pail packed in ice and coarse salt, scraped by hand — hence the beating with an iron spoon. The "patent freezer" has a crank-driven dasher that does the scraping. Either way, roughly one part rock salt to three parts crushed ice by volume in the outer bucket.
- Holding back a quarter of the mixtureAdding the reserved portion partway through re-liquefies the semi-frozen mass so it can be beaten smooth again. A modern machine with a continuous dasher needs none of this; add everything at the start.
- Newspapers over the freezerThe newspapers are insulation for holding the frozen cream until wanted; the text says only to exclude the air and set it aside, though period practice for such holding generally involved keeping the pail packed in ice and salt. A domestic freezer does the same job in a covered tub.
- Whipping the creamWhip only to soft, drooping peaks. "A stiff froth" folded into wet fruit purée and then churned will break, and the fat separates into grains of butter.
Housekeeping in Old Virginia, compiled by Marion Cabell Tyree and published in 1878, is a collection of contributions from named and initialled Virginia housekeepers, which is why the same dish appears twice in succession with different methods and different sets of initials. Frozen creams were a summer luxury that depended entirely on stored ice: a household needed an ice house or a standing order from an ice dealer, and the freezing salt as well. The first receipt (L. D. L.) says only "mix well and freeze" and specifies no equipment at all; it is the second alone that distinguishes the common pail freezer, worked with a spoon, from the "patent freezer" with a crank. The alternative with Cox's gelatine, a Scottish product widely sold in American groceries by this date, is a frank admission that cream was not always to be had, even on a farm.