The American Pastry Cook

Jessup Whitehead's American Pastry Cook — the hotel pastry trade's own manual, in hundreds of numbered recipes.

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Save the Sugar

And don't make the mistake of using too much sugar. You must make a profit, and sugar is an expense in two ways, in its cost at first and then in ice and salt for the more sugar in your cream the more ice it will take to freeze it. This you know is for common, though you want to be posted for fancy work too. When you go to Boston or Philadelphia, Johnny, you'll find them advertising "Vienna ices," bombes, bisquits glacees, etc. If made "according to Hoyle" these Vienna ices have a pound of sugar in every quart of rich cream, and the rule for fruit ices is a pound and a half to a quart. Just think of it--a cupful of granulated sugar in two cupfuls of thick cream, and the fruit ices and sorbets all syrups heavier than soda syrups. When these are well frozen they are more of frozen confectioneries, or candies made by cold instead of heat then they are light refreshments. They are intended to be shaped in moulds and to have a good deal of solidity. Your rule for common ice--cream should be not more than half a pound of sugar to each quart of milk and three quarters of a pound to each quart of fruit ice or sherbet, and Johnny, though I would not write it so in a receipt for anybody, for it might seem stingy, between you and me I think six ounces of sugar to each quart of milk is enough for the ice--cream that is only a light refreshment that people may eat plenty of without hurting themselves. They don't want food, but frozen perfume. I got a lesson in popular ice--cream making when I was a boy that has lasted me for comparison of different fellows' ways ever since, at a gaily decorated tent at New Orleans, on the levee and facing Tchoupitoulas street, where their cream was sold as fast as tickets for a circus, handed out in glasses piled high, three or four colors and flavors, and as many men freezing and beating, and as many more selling and forever yelling out, "Come up with an other freezer on the red," and "come up with another freezer on the yaller." Their cream was light, and cheap and plentiful. It was late in May, and all the ice they used had come in ship loads from the north. They didn't sit down and see--saw and Johnny, I don't think they used over six ounces of sugar to a quart. But they had fine flavorings, and you don't think they had any real cream or wanted any, do you?

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