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Fruit in Ice Cream
Just now ice cream in which fruit flavors figure are the favorites. In some the small fruits are frozen whole, in others they are pounded to a jam before going into the freezer and in others are used rather as a sauce for vanilla ice cream than as a part of the frozen mixture itself. It goes without saying that the trick of freezing fruits whole in the cream is the work of a novice. No one who has ever encountered a piece of ice such as a frozen strawberry makes would be guilty of preparing such an unpleasant surprise for anyone else. For a genuine "strawberries and cream" ice cream perhaps this rule will be dependable as any you can find: Have two quarts of berries, hulled and perfectly clean, mash and press through a sieve, then sweeten with loaf sugar powdered. Add three pints of milk, one quart of cream, and if you are not weighted down by prejudice in the matter of food colorings, a bit of vegetable carmine coloring. But if you would have iced strawberries hull and wash them and measure for your use two-thirds their amount of sugar. Fill then a dish with alternate layers of the berries and the sugar; over all pour a gill of pineapple syrup; cover the dish tightly, pack in ice and salt for a time and then serve with whipped cream. Raspberries, too, may be iced according to this suggestion, but they will not require as much sugar as the strawberries need. Also, by way of toning them up a bit for raspberries have a dim individualitya little brandy instead of a fruit juice might be poured over them. Though this is a matter for the individual to settle. This was meant, however, for a story of ice cream, so we will not stray further from the text. As a rule in talking of ice creams it is only necessary to make suggestions. Among experienced cream-makers it is not necessary to give explicit rules from start to finish, but rather to ask, for instance, "Have you, in making caramel ice cream, ever tried adding to it some chopped pistachios and some candied orange peel chopped to the finest bits possible?" The answer to which in most cases will be in the negative, with the comment that it had never been heard of. And yet the combination is so happy that it deserves to be well known. And speaking of pistachios in ice cream for the purpose of giving it character or flavor, they do a splendid work in both directions when used in banana ice cream. Some persons you know are very fond of bananas, and naturally they take to ice cream made of that fruit. And they will take to it more firmly still, in most cases, with some very finely chopped pistachios figuring in it. Usually the bananas are cooked in a little milk with sugar, then pressed through a sieve when they have added to them the yolks of two or three eggs, according to the amount of bananas used, after which the cream and milk in equal quantities are added, and then the freezing takes place. Most delicate in all its intents and purposes is a melon ice cream. Scrape out the soft center of a cantaloupe, press through a colander and add to it milk and cream in equal quantities with the sugar that seems necessary. In serving, the obviously proper receptacle will be the rinds of the melons. If you are to make macaroon ice cream it will be a helpful thing to set the macaroons in the oven to dry considerably before trying to grate them. Then the grating seems like play and is likewise successful. But they should be sifted before using. Have ready a frozen vanilla ice cream, into it stir the macaroons, pack into a mold and set deeply into a pail filled with ice and salt. There let it remain for two hours at least-three or four would be better. out a fine ice, but it is just this line of work that many of my fellow craftsmen are lacking. Possibly the simplicity of the work invites carelessness. At any rate, many turn out ices that proclaim their cheapness by their lack of finish.
This is fountain-trade shop talk rather than a formula sheet, but there are workable rules inside it: a strawberry ice cream, iced (macerated and chilled) berries, banana, cantaloupe and macaroon creams. A few points make them usable with a modern freezer.
- The hinge: no whole fruitThe writer's central argument is the one to keep. Whole berries frozen into a cream turn into ice pellets; the fruit must be crushed and sieved so its juice and sugar disperse through the base. Sugar and purée depress the freezing point, which is why a sieved berry cream stays scoopable and a whole strawberry does not.
- GillA gill is half a cup, 4 fl oz. That is the quantity of pineapple syrup poured over the iced strawberries.
- Loaf sugar powderedLoaf sugar was hard refined sugar broken from a cone and crushed at home; plain granulated or superfine sugar is the equivalent. No quantity is given for the strawberry cream, so sweeten to taste, tasting the unfrozen base sweeter than you want it, since freezing mutes sweetness noticeably.
- Vegetable carmineCarmine is cochineal, an insect-derived red still sold as E120 or "carmine"; it is not vegetable and not vegetarian, and it is a recognised allergen for a small number of people. Any modern red colouring, or simply no colouring, serves the same purpose.
- The strawberry proportionsTwo quarts of berries to three pints milk and one quart of cream is an eggless, old-fashioned Philadelphia-style base, somewhat leaner than modern premium ice cream. Shifting the dairy toward cream (say half and half by volume) gives a smoother texture with less iciness in a domestic machine.
- The banana custard and its raw yolksAs written the yolks go into sieved cooked bananas and are then slackened with cold milk and cream and frozen, so they never reach a temperature that pasteurises them. Cook the base as a proper custard to 170–175°F over low heat, or use pasteurised eggs; do not freeze raw yolks and serve them.
- MacaroonsThese are crisp almond macaroons, not the soft coconut kind. Drying them further in a low oven until thoroughly crisp before grating is sound advice — it is what makes them shatter into powder instead of gumming the grater.
- Packing and ripening"Pack in ice and salt" means a mould buried in roughly three parts crushed ice to one part rock salt, which drives the brine well below 32°F. In a home freezer, the equivalent of the two-to-four-hour packing is simply ripening the moulded cream in the coldest part of the freezer for the same length of time; the texture genuinely improves.
- YieldThe strawberry recipe makes about 3 1/2 quarts before churning — a fountain-sized batch. Halve or quarter it for a domestic ice cream machine, most of which top out near 1 1/2 quarts of base.
This reads as trade or newspaper shop talk from the American ice cream business. The tone is telling: the writer addresses "my fellow craftsmen" and assumes they already know how to run a freezer, so the piece offers combinations rather than formulas — caramel with pistachio and candied orange, banana with pistachio, cantaloupe served back in its own rind. All of it depends on ice and salt, since mechanical refrigeration was still a commercial luxury and the ice trade supplied the fountains. And there is a passing shrug about food colouring — "if you are not weighted down by prejudice in the matter of food colorings" — which suggests the practice was already contested.