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Maple Ice Cream
Three quarts of cream, 1½ pounds of genuine maple sugar. Cook the cream in a farina boiler, stirring frequently, until the water in the outer pan is boiling; then take it off the fire, add the maple sugar previously pounded into small pieces, and stir until sugar is dissolved; let stand a few minutes, strain, cover with gauze, and let stand till cold then freeze like any other ice cream. Should the cream be too white, add a little burnt sugar to give it a rich color. You may also use the custard cream. Two quarts of cream or rich milk, 12 eggs, 1½ pounds maple sugar. Pound the maple sugar then beat the yolks of the eggs, add the maple sugar and beat again; whisk the whites of the eggs to a stiff froth, stir them briskly into the yolks and sugar and mix with the cream, cook the whole in a farina boiler over a good fire, stirring constantly until it does not run off easily from a knife which has been dipped into it. Be careful not to let it curdle. Strain, cover and let cool; then freeze.
Two formulas for one flavour: a plain cream base and a rich custard. Both assume a hand-cranked freezer packed with ice and salt, and both benefit from a night in the refrigerator before churning.
- Farina boilerA double boiler — a pan set over a second pan of water. The instruction to cook "until the water in the outer pan is boiling" is simply telling you to bring the cream up to scalding without scorching it.
- The sugar quantity is ambiguous"½ pounds" for three quarts of cream reads as half a pound, which is very lightly sweetened for ice cream and would freeze hard and icy. It may be a misprint, but there is no way to tell from the text; sweeten to taste before freezing rather than trusting the figure.
- Genuine maple sugarMaple sugar was sold in hard cakes as well as in syrup form, and "genuine" most likely distinguishes it from the glucose-and-flavouring imitations then in circulation. Solid maple sugar is still sold and can be broken up as directed, or substitute pure maple syrup by weight and reduce the cream slightly to compensate for the added water.
- Custard doneness"Does not run off easily from a knife" is the nappe stage, in modern terms roughly 170–175F; much hotter and the yolks begin to curdle. The warning against curdling is the hinge of the second formula. Stir constantly and pull it off the heat the moment it coats.
- Whipped whites in the custardFolding the beaten whites in before cooking is unusual by later practice and gives a lighter, slightly foamy set. Twelve eggs to two quarts is a very rich base; six to eight yolks alone will give a smoother, denser result if you prefer.
- Burnt sugarCaramel cooked dark and dissolved in a little water, the period's colouring agent. A teaspoon is plenty; more will make the ice cream taste bitter.
- Cooling and coveringThe gauze cover keeps dust off while the base cools. Cool it quickly over an ice bath rather than leaving a large volume of custard standing at room temperature, then chill thoroughly — a cold base churns faster and freezes smoother.
- FreezingIn a modern machine, churn 20–30 minutes and harden in the freezer for several hours. Both bases are eggy or lean enough to set very firm; let it temper 10 minutes before scooping.
- YieldThe first formula starts from three quarts of cream, the second from two quarts plus twelve eggs — large batches either way. Halve or quarter for a domestic machine.
The quantities run to quarts, which points to a book written for commercial rather than domestic use, and the author's insistence on "genuine" maple sugar reflects a real problem: adulteration with glucose and artificial maple flavouring in the decades before federal food labelling. Maple sugar was the older and more portable form of the sugar bush's output; hard cakes kept and shipped where syrup did not, and they were broken or pounded as needed, exactly as directed here. Offering two bases, a plain cream and a custard, gave a choice between the cheaper, quicker version and the richer one, which is also more forgiving of thinner cream.