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Making Ice Cream
Anyone who wants a "formula for an ice cream which may be made by hand power, without any cooking and that will cost anywhere from 50 to 70 cents a gallon," should try the following easy method for making a 5-gallon batch: Use 2 gallons sweet cream, which is two or three days old, and 2 quarts of sweet milk. First, put 2 heaping quarts (about 4 pounds) of granulated sugar into a gallon measure and pour over the sugar 2 quarts of milk and nearly fill the measure with cream. Stir the sugar up with a long spoon or paddle until thoroughly dissolved; have the freezing can ready and strain the cream and sugar into it through fine cheesecloth, using a perforated funnel or cone to hold the cloth. It can be worked through the cloth by rapidly stirring with a spoon. Now add the balance of the cream. Two to 4 drams of American Double Standard Vanilla extract should be stirred in with the cream and sugar. The amount of milk used may be varied according to the richness of the ice cream desired, and to how heavy the cream is. Less milk and more cream is necessary if the cream is light or thin, and vice versa. The batch now ready is supposed to be reasonably cold, as no heat has been used to dissolve the sugar. Place the paddle in the can, cover it and set it in the freezing tub. The easiest and quickest way to break the ice is to use a spade-handle ice-shaver. Put 15 or 20 pounds into a small, strong wooden box about twice as large as the chunk of ice and cut it into pieces about one-half the size of a small lemon. Dump the cut ice around the freezing-can until the tub is full to the top of the can, then cover the top with rock salt liberally, and add a little more fine ice. Now begin to turn the freezer slowly and the ice and salt will quickly settle down. Add another layer of salt and cover to the top with ice and turn the freezer slowly for 15 or 20 minutes, when the cream begins to freeze. The ice and salt can be packed down the easiest by using the broomhandle. Run it or work it down the side and then shake it sideways, which will settle the ice and salt and will not jam the freezing-can. When the cream begins to freeze the water in the freezer will be three-quarters up to the top, or, perhaps, on a hot day, close to the top. This water should not be drawn off while freezing the cream. Now begin to turn the freezer quite fast and continue so until the cream gets quite stiff. While the cream is freezing do not stop turning if it can be avoided, as the cream will quickly turn hard around the freezer next to the ice and salt. A few trials will teach you just what to do. Remove the cover and draw out the paddle, scraping off the cream with a knife. Do it quickly and cover the freezer. Let the cream remain in the freezer for an hour or two to set, then transfer it to the cabinet, using a large spoon or transfer ladle. The cream may be transferred as soon as frozen, but it may be handled better if allowed to stand and get partly hard. Do not use as much salt in the ice cream cabinet as in the freezer. If the cream gets too hard, use less salt. Always keep the cream scraped down from the side of the can while using it. This will prevent chunks from forming and dropping down into the cream. Never let the cream get too soft-unless to be used in that way-before freezing it again in the packer. Soft cream frozen again in the packer will be icy and of coarse grain. ICE CREAM CABINETS.
Next to making, the keeping of cream is an important feature in this business. Too much cannot be said in favor of having cabinets. Cream, to be good, must be well kept, and this seems to be the only means. Further, they are neat and economical. When ice cream is kept in packers, one or two quarts are lost nearly every day from cream becoming soft. Another point is that it takes much less ice to keep cream in cabinets, because they are refrigerators, and one need never fear to have plenty on hand, for it will keep from two to four days, and that in good condition. The size and number of your cabinets must, of course, depend upon the quantity used. Send for Catalog of Ice Cream Cabinets. Made of wood, slate and marble.
A Philadelphia-style ice cream: no eggs, no cooking, just cream, milk, sugar and vanilla churned in a salt-and-ice freezer. The trade scale is five gallons, so the useful work here is dividing it down and translating the fountain's equipment.
- Scale it downThe full batch is 2 gallons cream, 2 quarts milk and 4 lb sugar. For a single quart of mix use about 3 1/4 cups heavy cream, 3/4 cup whole milk and 6 oz (a scant cup) granulated sugar. That is a sweeter mix than most modern recipes, which is deliberate — sugar keeps a hand-frozen cream from setting up like a brick.
- Drams of vanillaA fluid dram is 1/8 fl oz, about 3.7 ml or three-quarters of a teaspoon. Two to four drams flavours the whole batch; measured against the roughly 10 quarts of liquid mix the recipe lists, that is only about 1/4 teaspoon of extract per quart, which is faint by current taste. "American Double Standard" appears to be a trade grade of extract and the name implies double strength, so with ordinary supermarket vanilla expect to use rather more.
- "Sweet cream two or three days old"Sweet means unsoured, not fresh from the cow. Cream held a couple of days is generally reckoned to body up better in the freezer, and modern heavy cream that has sat in the refrigerator a few days may behave the same way; ultra-pasteurized cream is commonly said to give a thinner, less satisfying result than plain pasteurized.
- Dissolve the sugar cold, and strainSince no heat is used, the sugar has to be stirred out completely before the mix goes into the can, or it will settle and grit. The cheesecloth straining is not optional in the original method — it catches undissolved crystals and any cream lumps.
- Ice and salt proportionsThe book gives layers rather than weights. A working ratio for a rock-salt freezer is roughly 8 parts crushed ice to 1 part rock salt by weight for churning; more salt freezes faster but coarser. Ice broken to half-lemon size, as directed, packs without bridging.
- Do not draw off the brineThe instruction to leave the water in the tub is correct and often ignored. Brine conducts cold to the can far better than air pockets between ice chunks; draining it mid-churn stalls the freezing.
- Turn slow, then fastSlow turning while the mix chills, fast turning once it thickens. Stopping mid-freeze lets a hard shell set against the can wall, and that shell scrapes off as ice shards rather than blending in.
- Hardening, and what a "cabinet" isThe cabinet is an insulated ice-cooled holding chest, and the "packer" is a tub packed with ice and salt. A domestic freezer at 0F/-18C does both jobs. The hour or two of resting before transfer is the hardening step, and it matters for texture.
- Refreezing softened creamThe warning at the end holds: ice cream that has gone soft and is frozen again forms large ice crystals and turns coarse. Portion it before it ever thaws.
This comes from the trade literature of the American soda fountain, when the drugstore was as much a dessert counter as a dispensary, and the fountain man was expected to make his own ice cream in the back room. The eggless cream-sugar-vanilla formula is what is usually called Philadelphia-style, distinguished from the cooked French custard by having no yolks and needing no stove — which is exactly the selling point in the opening line, along with the price: 50 to 70 cents a gallon in materials. The hand-cranked bucket freezer with its inner can and rotating paddle, generally credited to Nancy Johnson's patent of 1843, is still the machine described here. The closing pitch for ice cream cabinets, with the catalog reference, is a reminder of what these books were: part manual, part advertisement.