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Vanilla Ice-Cream
1 quart cream 1 tablespoon vanilla extract 1/2 pound of sugar Put the cream and sugar into a double boiler, and scald them; when they are cold, add the flavoring, and freeze.
A Philadelphia-style ice cream: no eggs, no custard, nothing but cream, sugar and vanilla. It succeeds or fails on how cold the mixture is when it goes into the machine.
- Weigh the sugarHalf a pound of granulated sugar is about 1 1/8 cups, not one cup. Weighing is more reliable here, since the sugar concentration is what keeps the finished cream from freezing into a solid block.
- What "scald" meansBring the cream to 170-180F, when it steams and shivers at the edges but does not boil. The point is only to dissolve the sugar completely and to round out the flavor of the cream; boiling will give it a cooked, condensed-milk taste.
- Cold means genuinely cold"When they are cold" is the hinge of the recipe. Chill the mixture to 40F or below, which in practice means several hours or overnight in the refrigerator. A lukewarm mix churns slowly, whips in too much air, and comes out coarse and grainy.
- Why the vanilla goes in lastExtract is mostly alcohol and volatile aromatics, and much of the vanilla character boils off if it is added to hot cream. Stirring it into the cold mixture keeps the flavor bright.
- "Freeze" meant a crank churnIn this period "freeze" would normally mean a bucket freezer packed with crushed ice and coarse rock salt; period instructions commonly give something like three parts ice to one part salt by volume, cranked for roughly 20-30 minutes. Any modern machine, frozen-bowl or compressor, does the same job; churn until the mixture holds a soft ribbon.
- HardeningStraight from the churn this is soft-serve texture. Pack it into a chilled container, press plastic wrap onto the surface, and hold it in the freezer two to four hours before serving.
- Cream and fat contentModern heavy cream runs 36-40 percent fat. The recipe specifies only "cream", and richer cream gives the smoother result. Half-and-half or light cream will freeze harder and taste thinner; using a pint of cream and a pint of whole milk gives a lighter, more familiar result.
- YieldAbout 1 1/2 quarts after churning, once air is beaten in — eight to ten servings.
Ice cream made without eggs is generally called Philadelphia-style, a name used in nineteenth-century American cookbooks to distinguish plain sweetened cream from the French custard style thickened with yolks. The recipe also quietly records how much labor the word "freeze" once concealed. Before household electric refrigeration, a home cook needed delivered ice, a supply of coarse salt, and someone willing to turn the crank, which helps explain why frozen desserts tended to be a company dish rather than an everyday one.