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Frozen Custard
This is composed of cream, sugar and whole eggs made after the manner added to the different kinds that are of French cream, the necessary flavor added to the different kinds that and are cheapened by using ½ cream and needed. This cream can be changed or cheapened by using ½ cream ½ milk, or all milk with a corresponding number of whole eggs. The eggs hot cream before being added to the hot are beaten up well with some milk or cream before being added to the but kept stirring until it thickens, but batch on the fire; poured in slowly and kept stirring until it thickens, not allowing the batch to boil. Then remove from the fire and strain, occasionally stirring until it is cold, then freeze after the manner of other creams.
The text has been mangled somewhere between the typesetter and the scanner — several clauses repeat and collide — but the method underneath is a plain stirred custard: eggs beaten with a little of the hot dairy, returned to the pan, cooked until it thickens short of a boil, strained, chilled, frozen. Everything below assumes that reading.
- The hinge: never let it boilA whole-egg custard sets at roughly 180F and curdles not far above it. Cook over moderate heat, stirring constantly, until it coats a spoon and holds a line drawn with a finger, then pull it immediately. Straining afterward, as the original directs, catches the threads of egg that form anyway.
- "French cream" means a cooked egg baseIn American ice-cream usage, French cream generally denotes an egg-custard base — what a modern cook calls creme anglaise, and the ancestor of what ice cream makers still sell as French vanilla. Philadelphia-style, by contrast, is typically uncooked and eggless, though this page itself does not draw that comparison.
- Temper, don't dumpThe garbled sentence is describing tempering: beat the whole eggs well, whisk in a ladleful or two of the hot cream to warm them, then pour that slowly back into the pan while stirring. Adding cold eggs straight to hot cream scrambles them.
- No quantities are given, and that is deliberateNo quantities are given -- The entry reads as though you already have a cream formula on hand and simply want the custard variant; it gives no amounts at all. A workable starting point for a quart is 2 cups dairy, 3/4 cup sugar and 4 to 6 whole eggs, scaling the eggs up as you move from all cream toward all milk — the leaner the dairy, the more egg is doing the thickening.
- "Corresponding number of whole eggs"The text's own word is "cheapened," so substituting half milk or all milk is plainly an economy rather than a flavor choice. Lower-fat custard also freezes harder and icier than cream, which may be part of why the egg count is told to rise as the dairy gets leaner, though the recipe gives no reason.
- Chill properly before freezing"Occasionally stirring until it is cold" means cooling it down to prevent a skin; in practice, strain into a bowl, cool over ice, then refrigerate several hours or overnight. A cold, rested base churns faster and finishes smoother.
- "Freeze after the manner of other creams"In practice that meant a canister packed in cracked ice and coarse salt — period sources commonly give something in the region of three parts ice to one of salt by volume — worked until stiff. A domestic ice cream machine does the same job; churn until it holds soft peaks, then harden in the freezer for a few hours.
- YieldScaled as above, roughly a quart, or six modest servings. There are no added stabilizers here beyond the egg itself, so it is best eaten soon after freezing; it will turn coarse and icy in storage.
This entry reads as a variation slotted into a list of creams already covered: whoever used it was expected to know the base formulas and needed only to be told where the eggs went. The egg-cooked "French" cream is the same idea that still separates French vanilla from Philadelphia-style ice cream in American usage, and it descends from the custard sauce that English and French kitchens had been making long before ice cream was frozen at all. Frozen custard as a named American street and stand food is generally traced to the seaside resorts of the early twentieth century. What is described here is plainly a way of stretching expensive cream with milk and eggs while keeping the body rich enough to hold up in a dish of ice.