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Fruit Ice Cream
1 C sugar 1/2 C water 1 t granulated gelatine 1/2 C grated canned pineapple ¼ C orange juice ¼ C lemon juice 1 T cold water 2 C heavy cream Cook sugar and water to 240° F. Add gelatine which has been soaked for five minutes in the tablespoon of cold water. Add to this the pineapple, orange and lemon juice. Chill and fold into this mixture 2 cups heavy cream which has been beaten stiff. Pour into the refrigerator tray and freeze, stirring every 30 minutes until the mixture will hold its shape.
General Electric.
The typesetting has scrambled this one: the sugar, the second quantity of water and an egg white are stranded at the bottom, and "14 C water" is a broken 1/4 cup. Read the ingredient list as 1 cup sugar, 1/4 cup water for the syrup, plus the 1/2 cup water at the top, and the method makes sense.
- The hinge: 240°FThe sugar syrup must reach 240F on a candy thermometer, the top of the soft-ball range, before the softened gelatine goes in. Under-cooked syrup leaves too much free water and the finished cream freezes into a gritty block of ice crystals.
- The stray egg whiteThe printed method never tells you what to do with it. Beaten stiff with the hot syrup whipped into it, Italian-meringue fashion, it would lighten the base, but the page as printed gives no such instruction. If you are not going to pour boiling syrup over it, leave it out rather than folding it in raw.
- Canned pineapple is not a substitute errorFresh or frozen pineapple contains bromelain, which digests gelatine and will leave the mixture slack. Canned pineapple has been heated enough to destroy the enzyme, so use it as written.
- "Refrigerator tray"The metal ice-cube tray with the divider removed, set in the freezing compartment of an early electric refrigerator, which ran nearer 10F than 0F. A modern freezer is colder and faster; check at 20 minutes rather than 30 the first time.
- Still-freezing by stirringThere is no churn here. The half-hourly stirring is what breaks up crystals, and skipping a round shows in the texture. Expect three to four stirs over two to three hours, and beat hard each time, scraping the frozen edges into the soft centre.
- Gelatine measureOne teaspoon of granulated gelatine is just under half a modern 1/4-ounce envelope (about 2 1/4 teaspoons). Soak it in the tablespoon of cold water only, not in the syrup water.
- YieldThe two cups of cream roughly double when beaten stiff, so the finished quantity is nearer a quart and a half. It sets firm and benefits from ten minutes at room temperature before scooping.
The credit line "General Electric" is the interesting part. From the late 1920s the electric refrigerator was still a novelty most households were being persuaded to buy, and manufacturers pushed out recipe booklets to prove the machine earned its keep: frozen desserts, salads set in gelatine, chilled puddings, all built around the ice tray in the freezing compartment. Because those compartments were small and not very cold, the recipes lean on sugar syrup, gelatine and stiffly whipped cream to keep the mixture smooth without a churn. Compiled cookbooks of the period gathered whatever their contributors were actually cooking, which could include recipes clipped from an appliance pamphlet and passed along with the maker's name attached, the way another woman's name would be.