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Saratoga Ice Cups

For the following very easy method of serving ices ornamentally there should be provided a sufficient number of tin drinking cups made like tall tumbler glasses, to serve as molds. They need have no rimmed edge. Their slight flexibility makes them better that glasses to get the shell of ice out of. The commonest thin tumblers will answer how ever.

Take 4 dozen tumblers and set them in a freezing mixture of ice pounded extremely fine and well mixed with salt and a little brine from the freezing tub. The freezing mixture may be in a common washtub, or wooden box, and no deeper than the tumblers. Fill the glasses with thin strawberry, pineapple or lemon syrup, or with any of the preparations for fruit ices. Cover over the top of the tub with a table cloth and leave them to freeze. In from 15 to 30 minutes the glasses or moulds will have a coating of ice inside perhaps an eighth-of-an-inch thick. The unfrozen syrup should then be poured out and the glasses returned to the freezing mixture for the inside coating of ice to freeze perfectly dry and crystalized. The freezing may be hastened by gently stirring the freezing mixture among the tumblers with a stick and by turning the tumblers with the fingers.

When it is time to serve wipe the outside of the glass or mold with a cloth dipped in tepid water and turn out the shell of ice. Fill it with a curacao or caramel or nut ice cream or any other of different color from the cup itself, or with a pure frothed cream sweetened and flavored and frozen in the same ice cup set in a sorbetiere Different colored cups may be made with the green syrup of pounded muscatel grapes, with Concord grapes, cherries, etc. Observe that the less sugar these syrups contain the easier the cup shapes will be to freeze and the slower to dissolve. They last longer on the table than the ice creams they are filled with.

Ice cream in shape of eggs: A small number for a party table can be made without moulds by using egg shells of the largest sort. Procure some broad rubber bands from the stationers, such as are used for binding bundles of letter, etc, and half an inch in breadth. Empty the egg shells by making a hole at each end. Fill them with ice cream, soft and just freshly frozen. Draw the rubber bands over them so as to close the holes, brush over with melted butter besides to close all crevices against the salt, them drop them in the freezing tub and cover with the finely pounded ice and salt. Surprise ices: A more elaborate form of the foregoing egg shapes. Fill the shells with a white ice cream only partly frozen and fluid, close with the rubber bands and butter and immerse them in the freezing mixture about 15 minutes for a shell of cream to form inside. Then wash off the outside, remove the bands, pour or scoop out the cream that remains unfrozen in the middle and place the shells in a freezer well packed in ice and salt to freeze dry and crystalized, as already directed for ice cups. After that fill with chocolate ice cream or yellow frozen custard. The variations are endless.