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Chocolate Ice Cream II
Use recipe for Vanilla Ice Cream II. Melt two squares Baker's chocolate, by placing in a small saucepan set in a larger saucepan of boiling water, and pour hot custard slowly on chocolate; then cool before adding cream.
Strawberry Ice Cream I 3 pints thin cream 2 boxes berries 2 cups sugar Few grains salt Wash and hull berries, sprinkle with sugar, cover, and let stand two hours. Mash, and squeeze through cheese-cloth; then add salt. Freeze cream to the consistency of a mush, add gradually fruit juice, and finish freezing. Rich Jersey milk may be substituted for cream.
Two recipes run together here: a chocolate variation on the book's custard-based Vanilla Ice Cream II, and a separate strawberry cream that needs no cooking at all. Both were written for a hand-crank freezer packed with ice and rock salt.
- Baker's chocolate squaresTwo squares means 2 oz of unsweetened baking chocolate, the standard 1-oz square that Walter Baker & Co. sold. Any unsweetened bar works; the sugar comes from the custard.
- The improvised double boilerA small saucepan set in a larger one of boiling water is a bain-marie. Use a heatproof bowl over barely simmering water and keep the water off the bottom of the bowl, since chocolate seizes over direct or aggressive heat.
- Pour hot onto cold, not the reversePour the custard onto the chocolate, not the reverse -- The hot custard goes onto the melted chocolate slowly so the mixture emulsifies rather than splitting. Whisk constantly, and strain the base before chilling if it looks at all grainy.
- Cool before adding creamThis is the hinge instruction. Warm base added to cream gives you a greasy, half-set freeze; chill the chocolate custard thoroughly, ideally overnight, before combining and churning.
- Thin creamRoughly what is now sold as light cream, around 18 to 20 percent butterfat. Heavy cream cut about half and half with whole milk is close.
- Two boxes of berriesA berry box of the period was usually a quart, so about 2 quarts, or roughly 2.5 to 3 lb of strawberries. The juice yield after macerating and straining will vary.
- Squeezing through cheese-clothThis removes seeds and pulp, giving a clear pink cream rather than a fruity one. Modern taste often prefers the pulp; if you keep it, expect a coarser, icier texture.
- Add the juice lateStrawberry juice is acidic and can curdle sweet cream if it sits. Whatever the original reasoning, freezing the cream to a mush first and then adding the juice gradually works the same way in a modern machine.
- Freezing and yieldAn ice-and-salt freezer was generally packed at about three parts crushed ice to one part rock salt. In an electric churn, freeze to soft-serve and then harden two to three hours in the freezer. The strawberry recipe, on 3 pints of cream plus juice, makes something like 2 quarts; the chocolate yield depends on the Vanilla Ice Cream II quantities, which are not given here.
Fannie Farmer's book came out of a Boston that took ice seriously: New England ice harvesting was a major industry through the nineteenth century, and cheap block ice plus the crank freezer put ice cream within reach of ordinary households rather than confectioners alone. The named brand is local too. Walter Baker & Co. milled chocolate at Lower Mills on the Neponset River in Dorchester, not far from the Cooking School, and its unsweetened squares were widely used in American recipes. The note that "rich Jersey milk may be substituted for cream" is a reminder that dairy was still bought by breed and by farm, before homogenization and standardized butterfat grades flattened the difference.