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Tutti-Frutti Ice Cream
1 quart cream 1/2 pound sugar 1/2 ounce chopped almonds 1/2 pound preserved or candied fruit Scald the cream and sugar; cool; add the nuts and fruits and freeze.
A Philadelphia-style ice cream: no eggs, no custard, just cream, sugar and fruit. The whole thing depends on how cold everything is before it goes into the machine.
- Chill the base hardThe recipe says "cool," but a scalded cream base should go to refrigerator temperature and ideally rest several hours before churning. A base still at room temperature will churn to a coarse, buttery texture in either a hand-crank or a modern machine.
- Weights, not cupsHalf a pound of sugar is 8 ounces, about 1 1/8 cups granulated. Half a pound of candied fruit is roughly 1 1/2 cups once chopped, and half an ounce of almonds is only about 2 tablespoons chopped.
- Add the fruit lateStirring fruit and nuts into the liquid base, as written, lets heavy candied pieces sink and freeze rock-hard. Fold them in during the last minute or two of churning, or by hand as you pack the finished ice cream.
- Soften the candied fruitCommercial candied peel and cherries freeze to gravel. Chop fine and soak 20-30 minutes in a spoonful of kirsch, brandy or fruit syrup, then drain; the retained sugar and alcohol keep the pieces tender at freezer temperature.
- AlmondsAlmost certainly sweet almonds; blanching them is optional. Toasting lightly is not called for but adds flavour, since the base is otherwise only cream and sugar.
- "Freeze" meant a salt-and-ice churnThe original assumes a bucket freezer packed with cracked ice and rock salt, cranked until stiff, then packed and left to harden. Any modern churn does the same job; either way the ice cream needs two to three hours in the freezer afterward to firm up.
- YieldA quart of cream plus sugar and fruit makes about 1 1/2 quarts churned, or eight to ten servings.
Tutti frutti is Italian for "all fruits," and by the second half of the nineteenth century it is generally said to have become a standard American confectioners' term for anything studded with chopped candied fruit and nuts, ice cream above all. It suited the commercial kitchen and the well-stocked household pantry equally well, since the fruit came ready-made in jars and boxes and needed only chopping. What is notable here is the base: no eggs, no cornstarch, no gelatin, just scalded cream and sugar. That is the so-called Philadelphia style, common in American books of this period and dependent on cream rich enough to carry the dish alone. The entry runs short and assumes the cook already owns an ice cream freezer and knows how to pack it.