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Sour Milk Ice Cream
4 cups sour milk 1 1/2 cups sugar 3 egg yolks 2/3 cup lemon juice 3 lemons (grated rind) 3 egg whites Boil together lemon juice and sugar, and add egg yolks and lemon rind, then cool. Freeze sour milk to mush and add first mixture. Fold in stiffly beaten egg whites and freeze for 5 hours. Serves six.
A still-frozen (unchurned) lemon dessert from the era when a home refrigerator's small freezing compartment was the newest thing in the kitchen. Two things decide whether it works: what you use for the sour milk, and how you get the hot lemon syrup into the yolks without scrambling them.
- Sour milk means cultured milkSour milk means clabbered milk -- in older usage this is milk that has soured and thickened naturally, thick and tangy. Modern pasteurized, homogenized milk left out does not clabber; it spoils. Use 4 cups cultured buttermilk, or plain drinkable yogurt thinned slightly with milk.
- Temper the yolksBoiling lemon juice and sugar poured straight onto three yolks will curdle them. Whisk the hot syrup into the yolks in a thin stream, then cool the mixture completely before it meets the frozen milk.
- Acid and dairyTwo-thirds of a cup of lemon juice into 4 cups of soured milk will visibly curdle the base. That is expected here and the freezing masks it, but the mixture will be smoother if both parts are thoroughly chilled before combining and the base is whisked hard as the syrup goes in.
- "Freeze to mush"Pour the soured milk into a shallow metal pan and freeze until slushy and half-set, roughly 1 to 2 hours in a modern freezer, then break it up with a fork before folding in the other mixtures.
- Five hours, with stirringThe original assumes a weak freezing compartment. In a modern freezer at 0F the mixture sets much faster and will freeze rock-hard and grainy if left alone. Stir or beat it two or three times in the first two hours, then let it firm. Move it to the refrigerator for 20 minutes before serving.
- Raw egg whitesThe whites are folded in uncooked and never heated. Anyone serving children, pregnant women, the elderly or the immune-compromised should use pasteurized egg whites from a carton, which whip perfectly well for this purpose.
- Rind of three lemonsThat is a generous amount of zest for six servings and it will be assertive. Grate only the yellow, not the white pith, or the finished ice will carry a bitter edge.
- YieldSix modest portions, about a quart and a half of mixture before freezing. It is closer to a lemon sherbet or frozen lemon cream than a rich custard ice cream.