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Chestnut or Marron Ice Cream
Take 2½ dozen chestnuts, split and roast them, then remove the skin and place them in a copper kettle with 2 pounds of granulated sugar and 1 pint of water, place this on the fire and cook to the hard crack, or about 300 degrees. Then pour it on an oiled marble slab. When cold pound it in a mortar with enough sweet cream to form a soft paste. Put this on the fire with 5 pints of cream, constantly stirring until it has nearly reached the boiling point, then beat in 20 yolks, previously mixed with some cream or milk. Strain, and when cold add a good flavoring of vanilla. Another method for making this cream and much preferred by some ice cream makers, is the following way: Take the same amount of preserved marrons, rub them very fine with 1 quart of sweet cream and then pass this preparation through a sieve; pour this in a pan and dilute 1 pint of vanilla cream , and then freeze. Then whip up 1 quart of double cream, sweeten lightly and flavor with maraschino and mix this in thoroughly.
A soda-fountain formula written for a shop, not a household: the first method builds a chestnut praline, grinds it to a paste and folds it into a twenty-yolk custard. Read the yields before you shop.
- Yield and scalingFive pints of cream, the praline paste and 20 yolks make a very large batch, on the order of a gallon or more of finished ice cream depending on how much air the churn beats in. Quartering the recipe brings it within reach of a domestic machine; churn in batches whatever you make.
- "Hard crack, or about 300 degrees"That is 300F on a candy thermometer, and the book's figure sits at the low end of the usual hard-crack range of 300-310F. Sugar at hard crack sets glassy and brittle, which is what makes the cooled slab poundable; taken well beyond it the sugar caramelises and darkens.
- Copper kettle and marble slabAny heavy non-reactive saucepan will boil the syrup. For the slab, a lightly oiled marble or granite surface, or an oiled rimmed sheet pan, cools the praline fast and flat.
- ChestnutsTwo and a half dozen chestnuts is about 1 lb / 450 g in the shell, yielding roughly 12 oz peeled. Score each shell before roasting and peel while hot, taking off both the shell and the bitter inner pellicle, which is the "skin" meant here.
- Pounding the pralineA food processor does in a minute what the mortar did in twenty. Break the cold slab into shards, grind to a coarse powder, then add cream a spoonful at a time until it slackens into a paste.
- The custard is the hingeHeat the cream to just below a simmer, temper it into the yolks rather than dumping yolks into the pan, then return it to low heat and cook to 175-180F, stirring, until it coats a spoon. The original stops at "nearly the boiling point" before the eggs go in, which leaves the yolks underdone; take the finished custard to temperature, then strain and chill.
- Vanilla last, and coldThe first method adds its vanilla only when the custard is cold, and the second stirs the maraschino into unheated whipped cream. Both flavourings are volatile and lose aroma in a hot pan.
- Second method, translated"Preserved marrons" are marrons glacés or candied chestnuts in syrup, already heavily sweetened, so cut the sugar elsewhere. "Vanilla cream" means a plain vanilla ice cream base, and "double cream" is heavy cream. The base is still frozen in the churn, but the whipped cream folded in at the end lightens it towards a frozen mousse rather than the cooked custard of the first method.
- StorageWith this much sugar and fat it stays scoopable, but freeze it hard for at least four hours before serving and press paper against the surface to keep ice crystals off.
Chestnut ice cream belongs to the French confectionery tradition; the recipe's use of marron for the sweet cultivated chestnut, and of marrons glac\u points straight at Parisian practice, where candied chestnuts were a luxury winter sweet. The two methods here show a trade in transition: the first is classic pâtissier work, roasting nuts, boiling sugar to hard crack and building a rich cooked custard on twenty yolks, while the second buys the chestnut work ready-made and leans on whipped cream and maraschino liqueur, faster and cheaper. Twenty yolks and five pints of cream also mark this as a commercial formula in which richness came from eggs and butterfat.