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White Ice Cream
Three quarts milk, whites of four eggs beaten light, three tablespoonfuls arrow-root mixed in a little cold water and added to the eggs. Boil the milk and pour over the eggs, etc. Then put on the fire and thicken a little. When nearly cold, add a quart of cream. Sweeten and season to the taste and freeze.--Mrs. D. R.
Ice Cream without Cream.
One gallon milk, yolks of two eggs well beaten, whites of twelve eggs well beaten. Sweeten and scald the milk, and pour it on the eggs, stirring all the time. Put it in the kettle again and let it come to a boil. Season to the taste and freeze at once.--Mrs. E. W.
Two frozen custards from the same page: one thickened with arrowroot and enriched with cream, one relying on a dozen egg whites in place of cream entirely. Both assume a hand-crank freezer packed with ice and rock salt.
- ScaleThe first recipe makes a gallon of base (three quarts milk plus a quart of cream), the second a full gallon of milk. Either would have filled a large old-fashioned freezer and would serve a party rather than a family. Quartering either one is sensible for a modern 1.5-quart machine.
- "Season to the taste"Season here means flavour, not salt; period ice creams were commonly flavoured with vanilla, rosewater, citrus or nutmeg, though this recipe specifies nothing. If you want numbers, start with about a teaspoon of extract per quart of base and about 3/4 cup sugar per quart for "sweeten."
- ArrowrootStill sold, still behaves the same way. Three tablespoons slaked in cold water is a starch-set custard rather than a rich egg one, which is why the whites alone suffice. Cornstarch behaves similarly but sets a little chalkier and needs a full boil to lose its raw taste.
- Do not actually boil the second one"Let it come to a boil" will scramble twelve whites and two yolks into curds. Egg custards set in the region of 170 to 180F. Hold the custard just below a simmer, stirring, until it coats a spoon, then strain it — that instruction is the hinge in the second recipe; the first asks only that you "thicken a little."
- Pouring hot milk on eggsThe second recipe tempers explicitly: hot milk into the beaten eggs, "stirring all the time." The first only says to pour the boiled milk over the eggs, so add it in a thin stream with constant stirring anyway. Skipping the stirring is the usual way these custards fail.
- Chill before churning"When nearly cold" understates it. Refrigerate the base to 40F or below, ideally overnight, before it goes into the freezer; a warm base churns slowly and freezes coarse.
- The freezerA recipe of this date implies a hand-crank freezer: wooden bucket, metal can, dasher, and a packing of crushed ice and rock salt, though the recipe itself specifies none of this and period salt-to-ice proportions vary. Any modern churn works, but the second recipe in particular — no cream, no fat — will freeze hard and icy, so serve it soon after churning.
Housekeeping in Old Virginia (1877), compiled by Marion Cabell Tyree from contributions signed with initials like the "Mrs. D. R." and "Mrs. E. W." here, appeared when ice cream had moved from a luxury of the gentry to something a well-run household made in quantity for company. Virginia had a long head start: Jefferson's manuscript recipe for a cooked custard ice cream survives in his own hand, and ice houses stocked from winter ponds were standard on larger properties well before commercial ice was cheap. The hand-crank freezer with a dasher, generally credited to Nancy Johnson in the 1840s, is what made a gallon batch practical for a family cook. What is most telling here is the second recipe's title — Ice Cream without Cream. Milk was easy; cream was the scarce, perishable part, and twelve beaten egg whites were the household's substitute for it, a thrift that also explains the arrowroot in the first version.