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Maraschino Ice Cream
Take the yellow rind of 2 lemons, put this in the boiler with 2 quarts of and 1 pound of cream and 1 pound of sugar, place it over a slow coal fire, constantly stirring sugar, place it over a slow coal fire, constantly stirring until it thickens, not allowing it to come to a boil; add 10 egg yolks in the usual manner, then strain and occasionally stir it until it is cold. When cold pour in freezer and freeze. Then beat up stiff 1 quart of good double cream and incorporate it with ½ pint of maraschino, paddling it up very lightly; let stand about one hour before serving.
A French-style boiled custard base, churned and then lightened with whipped cream and liqueur. The typesetting has slipped in the original — a phrase is duplicated and at least one ingredient has dropped out — so read the quantities with that in mind.
- The missing ingredient"2 quarts of and 1 pound of cream" is a compositor's error; the omitted word is most likely milk, giving 2 quarts milk plus 1 pound cream. The phrase "sugar, place it over a slow coal fire, constantly stirring" is then set twice.
- Pounds, not cupsThe cream and sugar here are given by weight, though the milk is measured by the quart. One pound of cream is about 2 cups; one pound of granulated sugar is about 2¼ cups.
- Slow coal fireLow heat, and the instruction not to boil is the hinge of the whole recipe. Ten yolks in this much liquid will thicken at 175-180F; past about 185F the custard curdles and no amount of straining recovers the texture.
- "In the usual manner"Temper the yolks — whisk a ladle or two of the hot liquid into them before returning the mixture to the pan. Adding them cold and whole to hot dairy scrambles them.
- Lemon rindZest only, in wide strips, no white pith. It infuses during the heating and is caught by the straining.
- "Pour in freezer"This means a churn — a canister packed in cracked ice and coarse salt, hand-cranked. Any modern ice cream maker does the same job.
- MaraschinoThe clear cherry liqueur of the Dalmatian coast, now largely Italian-made, not the pink syrup from a jar of cocktail cherries. There is no substitute that behaves the same way.
- Alcohol and hardnessHalf a pint of liqueur folded in after churning depresses the freezing point considerably; the result stays soft and will not scoop cleanly from a home freezer. The recipe does not say what the hour's standing is for, or where it should stand.
- YieldNothing is stated. The base plus a quart of whipped cream and a cup of liqueur comes to roughly a gallon — thirty or more fountain-sized portions. Scale to a quarter if you are making it for a household.
Maraschino is distilled from the marasca, a small sour cherry grown around Zadar on the Dalmatian coast, and the liqueur trade there — Drioli and Luxardo are the names usually cited — supplied European and American confectioners through the nineteenth century. American soda fountains bought it by the case, both for flavouring ices and for the cherries steeped in it, which is how the word came to mean something quite different on this side of the Atlantic.