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Apricot Ice Cream
One quart apricot pulp, prepared by peeling about two dozen apricots; boil with ½ pint of water till dissolved; stir while on the fire and rub the pulp through a hair sieve; 1 quart double cream, i quart syrup, 32 degrees. A few drops of essence of apricot or peach kernels.
A soda-fountain formula written for someone with a syrup hydrometer and a hand-crank freezer. Two of its instructions — the degree of the syrup and the kernel essence — need translating before the rest makes sense.
- Syrup at 32 degreesThis is almost certainly 32 degrees Baumé, a hydrometer reading, not a temperature. It is a heavy simple syrup of roughly 60 percent sugar: on the order of 1½ lb sugar to 1 pint of water, boiled briefly and cooled. Syrup was commonly specified this way in the fountain and confectionery trades.
- Kernel essenceDo not crack apricot or peach pits and steep the kernels. They contain amygdalin, which releases hydrogen cyanide. Use a few drops of commercial bitter-almond extract, which is manufactured free of it, or leave the flavouring out entirely.
- Double creamHeavy or whipping cream, 36 percent fat or better, is the right substitute. British "double cream" at 48 percent will also work and gives a denser result.
- Hair sieveA fine-mesh strainer or a food mill with the fine plate. The point is to catch skin fragments and fibre so the finished ice cream is smooth; a blender alone will not do it.
- The fruitTwo dozen apricots is roughly 3 lb. Peeling is easier after a 30-second blanch and an ice bath. The half-pint of water is 1 cup; the fruit is boiled and then sieved, so expect the mixture to reduce to a pulp rather than a sauce.
- Sweetness and freezingA quart of 32-degree syrup to a quart of cream is very sweet by modern taste, but the sugar is doing structural work: it keeps the mix soft in a fountain cabinet. Cut it back substantially and the result will freeze hard.
- YieldAbout 3 quarts of mix, which churns up to something over a gallon. Halve it for a domestic machine, and chill the combined mix thoroughly before freezing.
The syrup here is specified by hydrometer degree instead of by cups. The Baumé scale, devised in the eighteenth century for measuring the density of solutions, was the standard shorthand of the confectionery and beverage trades well into the twentieth century; a dispenser kept a spindle in a tall jar of syrup the way a candy maker kept a thermometer. Apricot ice cream belonged to the summer end of the repertoire, when fresh fruit came in and the same pulp could be worked into ices and sundae dressings. The instruction to add "essence of apricot or peach kernels" reflects a period habit of reinforcing stone-fruit flavour with the almond-like note of the pit — a trick that survives in commercial amaretto and marzipan, though the kernels themselves are rarely handled in domestic kitchens today.