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No. 4
Soak ½ package of Cox's gelatin in a pint of milk. Boil 3 pints of milk, and while hot pour on the gelatin, stirring till dissolved. When cold add 2 quarts of cream, sweeten and flavor with vanilla to taste, then freeze.
A soda-fountain ice cream base built on gelatin rather than eggs — the fountain trade wanted a mix that held its body through a long afternoon of scooping. The whole thing turns on hydrating the gelatin properly.
- The hinge: soak, then dissolve off the heatThe cold pint of milk swells the gelatin; the hot three pints dissolve it. If you tip dry gelatin into hot milk it clumps and you will be straining out threads later. Stir until no grains remain against the side of the pan, and never boil the gelatin itself.
- "½ package of Cox's gelatin"Cox's was a Scottish gelatine sold in sheets and in powder, and package sizes varied by decade, so this quantity is genuinely ambiguous. For a base of this volume, 2 to 3 modern envelopes (about ½ to ¾ oz powdered gelatin) is in the right range; more will give a base that sets rather than churns.
- Volume and yield3½ pints milk plus 2 quarts cream is close to a gallon of mix before churning — roughly 5 quarts finished, once air is beaten in. Most domestic ice cream makers hold 1½ to 2 quarts, so scale to a quarter or a third of this unless you have a large hand-crank freezer.
- "Cream" in this periodCream sold under that name was generally nearer what we would call light cream or half-and-half than modern heavy whipping cream, though the fat content varied by supplier and no fixed figure can be given. Straight heavy cream at 36 percent will churn to something dense and buttery; a mix of heavy cream and whole milk tracks the original better.
- "Then freeze"This means an ice-and-salt churn: crushed ice packed with rock salt around the canister, cranked steadily until the paddle drags. In a modern machine, chill the mix thoroughly — overnight is best, since gelatin needs several hours to set up its structure — before it goes in.
- SweeteningNo sugar is specified; the recipe simply says to sweeten to taste. Period ice creams commonly ran somewhere in the region of 6 to 8 oz of sugar per quart of mix, but that is a rough guide rather than a documented standard, so start low and taste. Dissolve the sugar in the hot milk rather than the cold cream.
- VanillaAdd it to the cold base, not the hot milk. Vanilla's aromatics are volatile and a good part of the flavor leaves with the steam.
Gelatin as a body-builder in ice cream turns up on both sides of the counter. Household books of the period more often relied on egg custard, or on plain sweetened cream, while a druggist or confectioner serving from a tub all day had reason to want a mix that resisted melting and did not turn to coarse ice crystals on refreezing -- and gelatin gave that cheaply and without the labor of cooking a custard. Cox's, made by J. & G. Cox of Edinburgh, was among the best-known branded gelatines in the English-speaking trade in the later nineteenth century, sold in sheet and in granulated form, and cookbooks of the era name it the way they name Baker's chocolate, as a shorthand for the standard article. That the recipe is numbered rather than titled, and gives neither sugar quantity nor yield, suggests a formulary written for someone who already knew the proportions, though the origin of the page cannot be settled from the recipe alone.