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Coffee Ice Cream (Four quarts of cream i pound)
Four quarts of cream, i pound 12 ounces of sugur, 8 egg yolks, 3 ounces extract). Place sugar, 1½ of the of good ground coffee (or the equivalent of extract). Place sugar, ½ reached of the , keep stirring until it has reached cream and coffee in the pan over a slow fire with the remainder of cream and the boiling point; then mix up egg yolks pour it in, and bring it to the point of boiling. Strain through a fine sieve or cloth, then cool off and freeze.
The transcription is badly mangled — phrases repeat and a fraction or two has dropped out — but the method underneath is a standard French custard ice cream: steep coffee in scalded cream, temper in yolks, strain, chill, freeze. Work from the ingredient list and ignore the scrambled clauses.
- What the garbled line meansThe intent appears to be to heat the sugar, the coffee and part of the cream together until scalding, then add the yolks with the remaining cream and bring the whole back to the point of boiling. The repeated '½ of the' fragments are most likely transcription noise rather than two separate additions.
- Scale it downFour quarts of cream is a trade quantity and will yield well over four quarts of finished ice cream once churned. A quarter batch — 1 quart cream, 7 oz sugar, 2 yolks, ¾ oz ground coffee — fits a domestic 1½-quart machine.
- Sugar weight1 lb 12 oz is 28 ounces, roughly 4 cups of granulated sugar. That is about 7 oz per quart of cream, which reads sweet on the tongue but is normal for frozen custard: cold mutes sweetness, and the sugar keeps the texture soft.
- "The point of boiling" is the hingeOnce the yolks are in, the custard must not actually boil or it will scramble and no amount of straining will save the texture. Take it to 175–180°F and hold it there until it coats a spoon.
- The coffeeThree ounces of dry ground coffee is steeped in the cream, not brewed — a coarser grind suits infusion, and 20–30 minutes off the heat before straining is enough. 'Extract' here means a coffee essence or concentrate; a modern stand-in would be instant espresso powder to taste, or cold-brew concentrate replacing part of the cream.
- Strain, then chill hardThe sieve or cloth catches the grounds and any threads of set egg. Refrigerate the strained base overnight before churning — an aged custard freezes smoother and the coffee flavour rounds out.
- FreezingThe original assumed an ice-and-salt freezer of some kind. Any modern churn works; freeze until it holds a soft ribbon, then ripen in the freezer two to four hours before scooping.
The custard is a French-style ice cream: yolks, cream and sugar cooked to a nappe, distinct from the eggless "Philadelphia" cream ice that competed with it in American shops. Coffee was among the oldest of the non-fruit ice cream flavours, appearing in European confectioners' books long before it became a soda-shop staple.