Monitou Ices
Rocky Mountain scarlet wild raspberries in ice, and a white cream. Two freezers required.
This is a formula in the professional shorthand of the 1890s: a named combination rather than a set of instructions. To build it you supply two standard ice bases and assemble them.
- "Two freezers" means two ice-cream pailsA freezer here is the hand-crank pail with an inner can turned in ice and salt, not a cabinet. Two are called for because the fruit ice and the cream must be churned separately; in a modern kitchen that means two runs of the machine, or one churned batch and one held firm in the freezer while the second spins.
- The fruit half is a water iceThe fruit half is probably a water ice -- "raspberries in ice" most likely indicates a sugar-syrup sorbet rather than a dairy mixture, though this one-line formula does not say so outright. A workable modern ratio: 2 lb raspberries sieved for juice, an equal volume of syrup made from 1 lb sugar to 1 pint water, and lemon juice to sharpen. Confectioners of the period commonly checked syrup density with a saccharometer, with ice syrups generally falling somewhere around 18-22 degrees Baume.
- "A white cream" is a plain cream iceNot whipped cream. It is the simplest vanilla or unflavoured cream ice, deliberately pale so the scarlet fruit reads against it. Sweeten it lightly, since the fruit ice carries most of the sugar.
- Wild raspberriesThe Rocky Mountain wild raspberry named in the entry is smaller and seedier than a cultivated berry, and generally sharper. Cultivated raspberries may need slightly less sugar and a little more lemon; frozen berries work well here because the fruit is pur"index":4,"verdict":"hedge"}
- AssemblyThe recipe does not say how the two ices were put together. Paired ices of this kind were often moulded in layers or halves and buried in ice and salt to set, and a loaf pan lined with parchment, filled in two layers and frozen hard, gives that effect; slice across to show the two colours.
- StrainingSieve the raspberry purée through a fine strainer before freezing. Wild berries carry a large proportion of seed, and unstrained purée freezes gritty.
- Yield and servingThe formula specifies no quantities; on the reconstruction suggested above you would get roughly a quart of each, enough for about twelve to sixteen as a dessert ice. Serve well below freezing but not straight from a deep freeze; a fruit water ice turns glassy and flavourless when too cold.
The American Pastry Cook belongs to the era when hotel confectioners named ices after resorts, springs and railroad destinations, and the spelling here almost certainly points at Manitou Springs, Colorado, the mineral-water resort below Pikes Peak that drew wealthy summer visitors by rail in the 1880s and 1890s. Naming an ice for a place and specifying its local wild fruit may have done a certain amount of work on a menu: it told the diner something about the season and flattered the house's supply lines. The two-freezer construction — a scarlet raspberry ice and a plain white cream — is the same logic behind the striped and moulded bombes of the period, where contrast in colour and in richness did the work that flavourings and sauces do now.