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Plum Pudding Glace
To one pint cream or new milk, stir in thoroughly two table spoonfuls arrow-root. Boil three pints milk, and while boiling add the cold cream and arrow-root, also three eggs well beaten, and sugar to the taste. When cold season with vanilla bean, and stir in half a pound cut citron, half a pound currants, half a pound raisins cut and seeded. Freeze hard and serve in moulds.--Mrs. T.
An arrowroot-thickened frozen custard studded with the dried fruit of a Christmas pudding. The recipe assumes a hand-cranked freezer and a mould, and it assumes you know how to keep arrowroot from going lumpy.
- The hinge: slurry, then temperWhisk the arrowroot into the cold pint of cream until there is no grit at the bottom of the bowl, then pour it into the boiling milk in a thin stream while stirring. Arrowroot thickens almost instantly and sets clear; dumped in as powder it forms permanent lumps.
- The eggsThree beaten eggs going into three pints of boiling milk will scramble unless you temper them — ladle a cup of the hot milk into the eggs first, whisk, and return the mixture to the pan. Take the pan off strong heat once the eggs are in; arrowroot also thins if held at a hard boil.
- Quantities in modern termsA pint is 2 cups, so the base is 2 cups cream plus 6 cups milk, about 2 quarts of custard before the fruit. That will overflow most 1.5-quart domestic ice cream machines; churn in two batches or halve the recipe.
- "New milk"Milk fresh from the cow, unskimmed and unhomogenised. Whole milk is the substitute, and using cream for the full pint as the recipe allows gives a noticeably better texture, since arrowroot alone does little for richness.
- Vanilla beanThere is no infusion time given. Split one bean, steep it in the hot custard for 20-30 minutes off the heat, then scrape the seeds in and discard the pod; or use 2 teaspoons extract stirred in once the custard is cool.
- Sugar to the tasteStart at 3/4 cup for the full batch and taste the warm custard — cold mutes the perception of sweetness, so it should taste slightly too sweet before churning. The citron and raisins add their own sugar.
- The fruitA pound and a half of dried fruit in 2 quarts of custard is a heavy load. Chop it small so it does not seize the dasher, and add it in the last minute of churning rather than stirring it into the liquid base, where it sinks.
- "Freeze hard and serve in moulds"Pack the churned mixture into a chilled mould, cover the surface with parchment, and freeze at least 4 hours. To turn out, dip the mould briefly in warm water. Expect 12-16 servings from the full quantity.
Frozen versions of English plum pudding were a set piece of Victorian and post-bellum American dessert cookery: the fruit, citron and spice associations of the Christmas boiled pudding transferred to an iced cream, usually under the French label glac. Housekeeping in Old Virginia (1879), compiled by Marion Cabell Tyree from contributions by named Virginia housewives — hence the "Mrs. T." signature — appeared at a moment when ice was becoming reliably available to Southern households through the commercial ice trade, and the book carries a number of frozen creams and water ices. Arrowroot as the thickener rather than a heavier hand of egg yolks was common in nineteenth-century receipts; it set clear, and it was widely regarded as gentler on the digestion, which is why the same starch also turns up in the invalid-cookery chapters of the period.