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American and Philadelphia Chocolate Ice Cream
Twelve ounces of unsweetened chocolate (chocolate liquor), 3 pounds of powdered sugar, 5 quarts of sweet cream, a small piece of whole cinnamon. Melt chocolate over a slow fire, gradually add a little sugar and cream, also the cinnamon, have it quite thin and fully dissolved, then stir it into the cream, add a good flavoring of vanilla, strain into a can and freeze in the usual manner.
A soda-fountain batch formula, written for a shop freezer rather than a household one. The proportions are sound; the quantity is not, unless you are serving a crowd.
- Scale it downFive quarts of cream makes a very large batch; depending on how much air the freezer works in, expect somewhere between a gallon and a half and two gallons finished. Divide by five for a home batch: about 2.5 oz unsweetened chocolate, 9.5 oz sugar, 1 quart cream, and a 1-inch piece of cinnamon stick.
- Chocolate liquorThis is simply pure ground cacao with nothing added today sold as unsweetened or baking chocolate. Any 100% cacao bar works; do not substitute cocoa powder, which has had much of the cocoa butter pressed out and will give a thinner body.
- Powdered sugarIn trade usage of the period this meant granulated sugar ground fine, not the modern confectioners' sugar cut with cornstarch. Ordinary granulated is the closer match here, since it all dissolves in the warm chocolate anyway.
- Sweet creamCream that has not soured. Use heavy cream, or a mix of heavy and whole milk if you want a lighter body; all-heavy at this sugar level makes a very rich, dense ice cream.
- The hinge: melt, then thin graduallyMelt the chocolate gently over low heat or a water bath, then work in the sugar and a little cream at a time until you have a smooth, quite thin mixture before it meets the bulk of the cream, as the recipe directs.
- Cinnamon and strainingThe whole stick infuses the warm chocolate base and is caught by the strainer, along with any chocolate that failed to disperse. The recipe gives no infusion time; taste as you go.
- Freeze in the usual mannerFor the original this meant a hand-crank or brine freezer packed with ice and rock salt. Chill the base thoroughly first four hours or overnight then churn; an unchilled base churns slowly and comes out coarse.
- YieldThe full recipe makes a very large quantity, on the order of a gallon and a half to two gallons; the fifth-scale version gives roughly a quart and a half.
"Philadelphia" ice cream means ice cream made from cream, sugar and flavoring alone, with no egg custard base, unlike the styles built on cooked yolks. Philadelphia had a strong reputation for ice cream through the nineteenth century, and the plain-cream method became identified with the city closely enough that the name stuck as a generic category in trade manuals like this one. The soda fountain looms over a book like this one, and formulas were being written in five-quart batches for a druggist working behind a marble counter. The whole cinnamon is the older touch here — spicing chocolate with cinnamon is a habit often traced to Spanish and colonial drinking chocolate, and it lingered in chocolate ice creams well after vanilla became the common flavoring.