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Ice Cream Made From Milk
A fairly good ice cream can be made from milk as follows: of milk, flavor. 18 whole eggs, or IO whole eggs and 20 yolks of eggs, 2 pounds gallon of eggs, or 10 whole eggs and 20 yolks of eggs, 2 pounds of One gallon sugar, flavor. Place half a gallon of the milk and half of the sugar on a slow fire to boil. Meanwhile mix the other half of the sugar with the eggs, stir the boiling milk into it, replace boiling milk into it, replace on the fire, and stir till the eggs, do not let boil. Take off the fire and add the other milk at once, then strain, cool and freeze. The whole mixture may also be set on the fire at once , and beat with the egg beater until it comes to the boiling point, then finish like the other. Great care should be taken in selecting the eggs, 4.
This is a soda-fountain custard base scaled for a shop: one gallon of milk, two pounds of sugar and a great many eggs, cooked to a thin custard and frozen. The quantities are large but the method is standard stirred custard, and it scales down cleanly.
- The hinge: never let it boilOnce the eggs go in, the mixture must be held below a simmer. Custard thickens at about 175-180F and scrambles above roughly 185F; pull it the moment it coats the back of a spoon and thin ribbons hold on the surface.
- Reading the quantitiesThe ingredient line has collapsed on itself, but what is legible is one gallon of milk, two pounds of sugar, and either 18 whole eggs or 10 whole eggs plus 20 yolks. That is a rich custard by weight of egg, closer to a French-style base than to Philadelphia ice cream.
- Scaling to a home batchDivide by eight for a manageable quantity: 2 cups milk, 4 oz (about 1/2 cup) sugar, and either 2 whole eggs or 1 whole egg plus 2-3 yolks. That yields roughly a quart frozen.
- TemperingThe instruction to stir the boiling milk into the egg-and-sugar mixture is tempering, and it should be done in a slow stream with constant whisking. Adding the reserved milk off the heat immediately afterwards would arrest the cooking, which may be why the recipe says to add it "at once."
- Strain, then chill properlyStraining catches chalazae and any set egg. Chill the base thoroughly, ideally overnight, before freezing; a warm base churns to a coarse, icy texture.
- The one-pot variationSetting everything on the fire together and beating with an egg beater works, but it is far less forgiving. The original takes it to the boiling point; use a heavy pan and moderate heat, and watch it closely as it thickens.
- "Selecting the eggs"The warning reflects a period of uneven egg storage and no reliable dating, when a single stale egg could taint a whole gallon. Modern graded eggs make this far less of a concern, though the flavour of the finished cream still tracks the quality of the eggs.
- FlavouringThe original simply says "flavor." Vanilla was the commonest choice; add it after the custard comes off the heat so it does not cook away, using about 1 teaspoon per quart of finished mix.
Ice cream of this kind was sold by the plate in nineteenth-century American shops, and trade manuals doubled as production guides for the man behind the counter. The distinction drawn here matters commercially: a "fairly good" cream made from milk was the economical alternative to one built on cream, with eggs supplying the richness and body that butterfat otherwise would. Formulas of this type are the ancestor of what is now called French or custard-style ice cream, and the heavy egg load also served a practical purpose in hand-cranked freezers, where the emulsifiers in the yolks helped keep the mixture smooth.