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Frozen Tom and Jerry
2 cups milk 3/4 cup sugar Yolks 6 eggs 1/8 teaspoon salt 2½ cups cream 2 tablespoons rum 1 tablespoon brandy Make a custard of first four ingredients; strain, cool, add cream, and freeze to a mush. Add rum and brandy, and finish the freezing.
A frozen custard flavored like the hot holiday punch it borrows its name from. The only real difficulty is the alcohol, which fights the freezing.
- Add the spirits late, as writtenAlcohol depresses the freezing point, so spirits stirred in at the start slow the set and give a softer, slacker result. Farmer's sequence — freeze to a mush, then add rum and brandy, then finish — keeps the freezing on track and is worth following.
- Cook the custard to temperatureSix yolks in two cups of milk thickens between 170 and 180F. Stir over low heat or a water bath until it coats the spoon; pull it the moment it thickens, since yolk custard scrambles a few degrees later.
- Strain and chill properlyStrain while hot, then cool to refrigerator temperature — ideally several hours or overnight. A warm base churns badly and gives coarse ice crystals.
- CreamUse a rich cream here; a modern heavy cream is the closest equivalent. A lighter cream or half-and-half will give a harder, thinner-tasting result.
- Freezing without a hand-crank freezerAn electric machine works; churn until it holds soft peaks, add the spirits, and churn a few minutes more. If using the original ice-and-salt method, the standard ratio is about three parts crushed ice to one part rock salt by volume.
- HardeningThe small amount of spirits will keep this a little softer than a plain custard ice. Pack it into a chilled container and hold it in the coldest part of the freezer for several hours; expect a scoopable texture rather than a hard brick.
- YieldAbout one and a half quarts, serving eight to ten. It is rich enough that small portions are correct.
Tom and Jerry is a hot drink — beaten eggs, sugar, rum and brandy topped with hot milk or water — that was a fixture of American winter bars in the nineteenth century, and the name is generally traced to the roistering pair Corinthian Tom and Jerry Hawthorn from Pierce Egan's Life in London (1821), whose popularity in stage adaptations attached their names to all manner of goods. Jerry Thomas, the bartender whose 1862 Bar-Tender's Guide did much to fix American drink recipes in print, included it and claimed it as his own. By the time Fannie Farmer was compiling the Boston Cooking School book, the flavor combination was familiar enough to need no explanation.