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Ordinary Ice--Cream
You will see some ice--cream makers put raw yolks of eggs in the cream because, they have found that cooking the eggs in it destroys the frothing quality. I dont like that either, and I compromise by making a boiled search custard with scant one ounce of search to each quart of milk, and beating two or three, or at most four yolks to a quart light in a deep pan and pouring the scalding custard to them which half cooks the yolks and makes a custard that can be churned to a froth if wanted.
When you make a custard that way it saves ice to cook only half the milk with all the enriching ingredients in and pour the other half cold to it afterwards. When you boil milk always boil the sugar in it, and that will prevent scorching on the bottom. Now, Johnny, brace up and go to work, and when you get as far as moulding ice creams for party dinners we will talk again. But that heavy iron scraper you have got made by a blacksmith is not--unable, people of fine perceptions can taste iron in cream, besides you are liable to drive it through the bottom of your freezer and spoil all. The largest size flexible palette knife is the best thing to loosen the frozen cream from the sides of your old fashioned freezer, and for the beating up of the cream make yourself a paddle of hard wood as long as a spade, but light and narrow; one that you can stand up with and have a good hold on to churn and beat with both hands.
This is a working pastry cook's base formula rather than a numbered recipe: a starch-thickened boiled custard, poured hot over beaten yolks so the yolks stay light enough to whip. The proportions are all per quart of milk, so it scales cleanly.
- The hinge: pour hot onto the yolks, not the reverseThe scalding starch custard is poured in a thin stream onto the beaten yolks while whisking, which sets them only partly and leaves the mixture able to take air. Dumping yolks into a hot pan, or letting the mixture boil after the yolks go in, curdles it and kills the froth the whole method is built around.
- Egg safetyA custard that is deliberately only half cooked and then frozen never reaches a temperature that pasteurises the yolks. Cook the finished mixture gently to 170°F (77°C), or use pasteurised eggs, if it is going to anyone whose immune system is compromised.
- Quantities per quartA quart is 4 cups. One scant ounce of thickening starch is roughly 3½ to 4 tablespoons of cornstarch; two to four yolks per quart gives a range from lean to fairly rich. Sugar is not specified in the recipe at all — a modern custard ice cream typically runs about 6 to 7 ounces (¾ to 1 cup) per quart of dairy.
- "Scalding"Bring the milk to 180–185°F (82–85°C), when it steams and shivers at the edges. Note that the recipe itself speaks of a boiled starch custard and of boiling the milk.
- Boil the sugar with the milkThe advice is worth following: sugar dissolved in the milk from the start raises its boiling point slightly and appears to help keep milk solids from settling and catching on the pan bottom. Use a heavy-bottomed pan and stir into the corners.
- Cooking only half the milkHeating half the milk with the sugar and starch, pouring that over the beaten yolks, then stirring in the remaining cold half, drops the mixture toward churning temperature immediately. The original reason was to save ice; in a modern kitchen it simply shortens the time in the refrigerator before the mixture is cold enough to spin.
- Chill before churningWhitehead's freezers ran on ice and salt and would eventually freeze a lukewarm mixture, at the cost of more ice — which is precisely what the recipe is trying to avoid. A domestic machine is less tolerant: refrigerate the custard to 40°F (4°C) or below, ideally overnight, or it will never freeze properly.
- The toolsThe objection to the blacksmith's iron scraper matches the text's own claim that iron can be tasted in the cream. If you are working an old-style bucket freezer by hand, a large flexible palette knife or a silicone spatula loosens the frozen wall, and a long light hardwood paddle lets you beat with both hands. None of this applies to a canister machine with a dasher.
- YieldA quart of milk plus enrichment should give somewhere around 1½ quarts of finished ice cream once air is beaten in, depending on how much is whipped in — roughly eight to ten servings.
The American Pastry Cook belongs to the run of trade manuals Jessup Whitehead wrote for hotel and restaurant kitchens in the 1880s and 1890s, and its voice is the voice of a chef talking over an apprentice's shoulder — hence "Now, Johnny, brace up and go to work." The argument being settled here was a live one in professional kitchens: cooked-custard ice cream keeps and tastes richer, but a fully cooked yolk mixture will not whip, and cooks who wanted volume were putting raw yolks straight into the cream. Whitehead's compromise — starch for body, hot custard poured over lightly beaten yolks for lift — is the same reasoning behind the starch-thickened ice creams still standard in parts of Europe and in commercial practice, where stabilisers do the work starch did. The talk of saving ice is a reminder that every quart of ice cream in a hotel kitchen was paid for twice, once in cream and once in blocks of ice hauled from the icehouse, and that the ambition Whitehead dangles in front of Johnny was moulded, sculptural ice cream for banquet service.