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White Cherry Cream
1 quart of pure sweet cream. 3 or 4 pints of California white wax cherries. 1 pound of sugar. 1/2 pint of water.
Make a boiling syrup of the sugar and water, drop in the cherries and let them simmer in it about 15 minutes, without stirring or breaking. Then strain the flavored syrup into the freezer and set the fruit on ice, to be mixed in at last. Add the quart of cream to the syrup in the freezer, freeze and beat up well, then stir in the cherries and pack down with more ice and salt. Artificial ice made at a cost of one dollar a ton; ice cream same price. "It were a consummation devoutly to be wished." We are thinking not of the finished product after it has left our hands--perhaps the young gentlemen who take the young ladies out on summer evenings would not wish it quite so cheap--but of some easy and perfect process of freezing it such as is condensed and summed up in the idea conveyed by that rate of cheapness. For few know how difficult it is to get the drudgery of ice--cream freezing done properly, none perhaps but those who have to oversee its preparation along with a number of other skill--demanding productions for the hotel dinner. It is of little avail that we make the cream or custard or sherbet good and finely flavored if the transformations possible in the freezing process be not skilfully carried out. In freezing, if you know how, you can transform skimmed milk into the semblance of cream, and if you don't you can not prevent rich cream from transforming itself into the semblance of skimmed milk. Now when they get through with that tedious electric light subdivision perhaps the inventors will subdivide the artificial ice machines so that ice cream can be made in every little house in some less clumsy and imperfect way than the present with ice and salt. The great obstructionist in ice cream making is the lazy yardman, second pastry--cook or other helper who ought to turn the freezer fast and beat the cream thoroughly, and we want an electrical or chemical machine of some kind to supersede him.
A no-egg Philadelphia-style ice cream, built on a cherry syrup rather than a custard. The commentary that follows the recipe is the author complaining about hand-cranked freezers, not part of the method.
- "Freezer" means the churnHere the freezer is a hand-cranked ice-and-salt bucket. Read every mention of it as your ice cream machine; "pack down with more ice and salt" means leaving the churned cream to harden in the packed freezer, which in modern terms means transferring it to a container and hardening it in the freezer for a few hours.
- White wax cherriesThese are pale-yellow, blush-cheeked sweet cherries; the historical match is Royal Ann (Napoleon), and the modern Rainier will serve as a substitute. Ordinary dark cherries will work but will tint the cream pink, which defeats the point of the dish.
- The cherry quantity is vagueThree to four pints is given by volume of whole fruit; expect roughly 2 to 2 1/2 lb, a little less once pitted. The original says nothing about pitting, but pit them, and do it before the syrup so the fruit stays whole.
- Measures1 lb sugar is about 2 1/4 cups; 1/2 pint water is 1 cup; 1 quart cream is 4 cups. Use heavy cream at 36% fat, not half-and-half, or the texture goes icy.
- Simmer gentlyFifteen minutes at a bare simmer with no stirring is deliberate: the fruit takes up sugar and holds its shape. A hard boil will collapse the cherries and thicken the syrup toward candy.
- Chill before churningThe recipe pours hot syrup straight onto the cream, which no modern machine will tolerate. Combine, then refrigerate to 40F or below before churning; a warm mix churns slowly and freezes coarse and icy.
- Fold the fruit in coldCherries added at the end, well chilled, is the one instruction worth keeping exactly as written. Warm fruit melts the churned cream, and fruit added early freezes into hard nuggets.
- YieldAbout 2 1/2 quarts with the fruit, serving 10 to 12. It is best the day it is made; without egg yolks it firms hard and dry after a couple of days.
"White wax cherries" points to the light-fleshed sweet cherries California orchards were shipping east by the later nineteenth century, the type now sold as Royal Ann (also called Napoleon -- the same cultivar under two names); naming the origin may well have been a way of advertising that the kitchen bought good fruit by rail. The ice cream itself is the Philadelphia type, cream and sugar and no custard base, one of the two standard American styles of the period alongside egg-rich custard bases. What dates the page is the digression: mechanical ice plants were spreading and the subdivision of the electric light was the technological talk of the moment, and the author is openly wishing someone would build him a machine to replace the helper who was supposed to crank the freezer fast and beat the cream thoroughly. Household electric churns were still a long way off, so the drudgery he describes was, for the time being, unavoidable.