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No. 2
2 cans American Evaporated Cream, $0.30. 1¼ pints Water, boiled and cooled ½ pound Sugar, .0234; 10 drops American Concentrated Vanilla Extract, .004; Ice and Salt for freezing, .03. $0.36 Mix and freeze. This will double in freezing, and produce 3 quarts, costing 36 cents, or per gallon 48 cents. For very rich ice cream add one raw egg well beaten.
A fountain operator's costing sheet as much as a recipe: the point is 48 cents a gallon, and the method is left to a professional who already owns a freezer. A few things need translating.
- Evaporated creamIn trade catalogues of this period "evaporated cream" is unsweetened evaporated milk, sold under names that leaned on the word cream. Modern evaporated milk in 12 fl oz cans is the direct descendant; two cans give about 3 cups. It is not the same as sweetened condensed milk, and substituting it will wreck the sugar balance.
- The liquid measure1¼ pints is 2½ cups. With two cans of evaporated milk that gives roughly 5½ cups of base before sugar, which is consistent with the stated three quarts after the mix doubles in the freezer.
- SugarHalf a pound of granulated sugar is a generous cup, about 1⅛ cups. Dissolve it fully in the water before adding the milk; undissolved sugar in a cold mix stays gritty.
- Concentrated vanillaTen drops suggests a concentrated fountain extract stronger than grocery vanilla, though how much stronger is not recorded. With ordinary pure vanilla extract you will need considerably more; start low, taste the cold mix, and build up, since freezing mutes flavour.
- Ice and saltThis is a hand- or motor-cranked bucket freezer. Rock salt and crushed ice at roughly one part salt to six or eight parts ice by volume brings the brine well below freezing; more salt freezes faster but coarser. Any modern churn works, and the mix should be thoroughly chilled in the refrigerator first.
- "Will double in freezing"That doubling is overrun, air whipped in by the dasher. Domestic machines rarely reach 100 percent overrun; expect closer to two quarts than three from these quantities, and a denser, icier result than commercial fountain cream since there is no egg yolk, stabiliser or high butterfat.
- The raw egg additionThe suggested beaten raw egg goes into a mix that is never heated. Leave it out, or use a pasteurised egg product if you want the extra body.
- Yield and servingThree quarts as written, intended to be scooped straight from the can into sodas and sundaes. Because it is low in fat and free of stabilisers it hardens like a brick in a home freezer; serve it soft from the churn or let it temper 15 minutes before scooping.
Books like this one were sales literature dressed as instruction: a canned-milk or extract house put its own products at the head of its formulas and costed them out to fractions of a cent. That accounting is the real subject here — 36 cents for three quarts, 48 cents a gallon, against a soda fountain trade that had grown from a pharmacy sideline into the social centre of American main streets. Evaporated milk was part of what made it possible. Sterilised in the can and shelf-stable without sugar, it freed the fountain from a daily delivery of sweet cream in warm weather, which is why a vanilla ice cream built entirely on tinned milk and water could be sold as a sound commercial proposition rather than a compromise.