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Tutti-Frutti Ice Cream
Make an ice cream of 4 quarts of rich cream, 2 pounds of white sugar, 4 eggs, I fine vanilla bean, split and cut crosswise into small pieces; mix all well together in a bright and clean copper basin; place on the fire and bring it just to the boiling point, stirring it constantly with a wire whisk; then immediately strain it through a hair sieve into an earthen or stoneware pan; when cool pour it into your freezer and freeze, turning the crank slowly till it is frozen in and difficult to turn; then remove the dasher and add about a quart of preserved and slightly dried fruits in the following proportions: Of cherries, pineapples (cut into small pieces), strawberries, apricots, green gages, peaches, etc., all cut small and in equal portions to form the required quantities; add also, if at hand, one gill of kirschwasser and the juice of 2 lemons; work all these thoroughly well into the cream by means of a long-handled spatula; then draw off the surplus water from the tub and repack it with fresh ice and salt; cover all with blankets or cloths and set aside for an hour or two to harden and ripen.
A soda-fountain formula written for a shop, not a household: the base alone is a gallon of cream. Everything scales down cleanly by quarters.
- Scale it downAs written this yields well over five quarts, more than any domestic machine will hold. Quarter it — 1 quart cream, 8 oz sugar, 1 egg, a third of a vanilla bean, a cup of fruit, 2 tablespoons kirsch — for a batch a 1.5-quart machine can handle.
- A gillHalf a cup, 4 fl oz. Alcohol depresses the freezing point, so a heavy hand with the kirsch will keep the ice cream from firming up properly.
- "Just to the boiling point"With only four eggs to a gallon this is a scalded cream rather than a true custard. The recipe says to take it to the boil; modern practice would stop the moment steam rises and the surface trembles, around 175-180F, since actual boiling can scramble the egg into threads.
- Copper basin and hair sieveUnlined copper was the professional standard for its even heat; any heavy nonreactive saucepan does the same job. A hair sieve is a fine-mesh strainer — use one, and pour into a wide bowl so the base cools fast. Chill it thoroughly, ideally overnight, before churning.
- Preserved and slightly dried fruitsThis means candied or glace fruit, drained of syrup and left to firm up, not fresh or frozen fruit — fresh pieces freeze to gravel. Greengages are a small green plum, candied along with the rest in traditional confectioners' mixes. Chop everything to pea size.
- Adding the fruitFold it in at the end of the churn, when the machine labours, exactly as written. Added earlier the paddle pulps the fruit and stains the whole batch pink.
- Packing and ripeningRock salt to crushed ice, roughly 1 part to 4-6 by volume, with the proportions varying between practices; drain the meltwater first or it will find its way into the can. With a modern machine, simply transfer to a chilled container and give it two hours in the freezer — the ripening step is real and improves the texture.
- YieldFull quantity serves about thirty; the quartered version makes roughly a quart and a half.
Tutti frutti is Italian for "all fruits," and the name attached itself in nineteenth-century America to any confection studded with a mixture of candied fruit — ice cream, but also chewing gum, sweets and a cordial made by layering fruit and sugar in a crock through the summer. The soda fountain took it up as a house showpiece. The method here — a scalded cream base frozen in a hand-cranked tub, then hardened under blankets in fresh ice and salt — was the working standard in American shops until mechanical refrigeration displaced it, and the instruction to let the finished ice cream sit an hour or two to "ripen" is one modern recipes still repeat, for the same reason: the texture smooths and the flavours settle.