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Ginger Ice Cream
To recipe for Vanilla Ice Cream II, using one-half quantity vanilla, add one-half cup Canton ginger cut in small pieces, three tablespoons ginger syrup, and two tablespoons Sherry wine; then freeze.
A variation rather than a standalone recipe: it assumes you have the custard-style vanilla base from earlier in the chapter and simply flavors it. Everything hinges on the preserved ginger and its syrup, which no longer sit in most pantries under that name.
- Canton gingerGinger root preserved in heavy sugar syrup, sold in stoneware jars shipped from Guangzhou. Modern stem ginger in syrup, sold in jars, is the direct equivalent; crystallized ginger will work if you rinse off the sugar coating, but then you must supply the syrup separately.
- Ginger syrupThe liquid from the jar of preserved ginger, not a modern ginger-flavored coffee syrup. If your jar is short of liquid, a syrup simmered from sugar, water and fresh sliced ginger is closer in character than anything bottled.
- The baseVanilla Ice Cream II is the second of the book's numbered vanilla recipes; in Farmer this is the custard-style base rather than the plain cream one, so check the recipe as printed in your edition. Chill the custard thoroughly before churning, as a warm base tends to give a coarser texture.
- "One-half quantity vanilla"Simply halve whatever the vanilla recipe you are working from calls for; in the region of a teaspoon or two. It is meant to sit under the ginger, not compete with it.
- Alcohol and freezingThe sherry and the sugar in the ginger syrup will soften the set slightly. There is no advantage in increasing the sherry.
- When to add the gingerThe recipe adds it before freezing. If you prefer the pieces evenly distributed, you may instead fold the chopped ginger in near the end of churning or before the ripening stage.
- Freezing equipmentWritten for a hand-crank freezer packed with cracked ice and rock salt in a three-to-one ratio. An electric machine works directly; after churning, transfer to a container and hold in the freezer an hour or two, which is what the old books called ripening.
- YieldDepends entirely on the vanilla base you start from; add roughly a cup of ginger and syrup to whatever that recipe makes.
Preserved ginger from Canton, a name that came into English via Portuguese renderings of the province name rather than as a transliteration of the city's, arrived in American cities through the China trade in squat glazed jars that turned up in kitchens and on sideboards well into the twentieth century. It was a pantry luxury: expensive enough to be worth mentioning by origin, keeping indefinitely, and useful for puddings, cakes and sauces as well as ice cream. The ices chapter is largely a set of variations hung on two or three base recipes, which is how a cooking school taught economy of method, and ginger ice cream belongs to the fashion for warm, spiced frozen creams served at the end of a formal dinner.