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Fruit Ice Cream
At many fountains fruit ice creams are now served, having the same flavors as the soda syrups. To make delicious fruit ice creams make up cream by any of above formulas, omitting the vanilla. Freeze until almost hard, then add to each gallon of cream ½ pint of American Crushed or Whole Fruit, any flavor desired, and freeze very hard. This will produce the most delicious fruit creams, either to use in soda water or to serve in a saucer or sherbet glass.
This is a fountain formula rather than a household one: it assumes a gallon batch, a crank or brine freezer, and a case of packed fruit on the back bar. The method still works, scaled down.
- The hinge: add the fruit lateThe fruit goes in only when the cream is almost hard, then the batch is frozen very hard. Adding sweetened fruit and its syrup at the start depresses the freezing point and slackens the mix; folding it into a nearly set base keeps the ribbons distinct and the body firm.
- Scaling the ratioHalf a pint of fruit per gallon is 1 cup to 16 cups, or about 1/2 fl oz of fruit per cup of base. A standard 1 1/2-quart home machine (6 cups) would take roughly 3 fl oz, about 6 tablespoons. That is a restrained amount by modern taste.
- "American Crushed or Whole Fruit"Evidently a trade product rather than a household one: fruit packed in syrup for soda fountains, and the recipe's own opening ties the flavors to the fountain's syrup line. The nearest modern equivalent is likely a thick fruit preserve or a commercial dessert topping rather than fresh fruit, which carries more water.
- "Any of above formulas"The base is whichever cream mix the book gives earlier. If yours is an uncooked cream-and-sugar mix, note that it is never heated at any point in this recipe; use a cooked custard or a pasteurized base if that matters to you.
- Freeze very hardFountain practice was to pack the can in salt and ice and hold it. In a home freezer this means transferring to a shallow covered container and hardening at 0F or below for at least four hours before scooping.
- Yield and servingA gallon is roughly 32 half-cup scoops. Served either as the ice cream in a soda, floated on carbonated water and syrup, or plain in a saucer or a footed sherbet glass.
This entry appears to belong to the era when the drug-store soda fountain was a full dessert counter, and the text suggests the logic of that trade: the fountain already stocked crushed fruit in syrup for sodas and sundaes, and one might infer that the same tins were folded into the ice cream freezer to produce a matching line of fruit creams without a separate inventory. Packed fruit in heavy syrup, sold to fountains under various proprietary names, is often said to have been more reliable than fresh, with steadier sweetness and color and availability in February. Fountains of this period are generally understood to have frozen in a can set in a brine or salt-and-ice bath, which may be why the text speaks of freezing "very hard" rather than of any temperature; hardness was judged by the crank and the hand.