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Orange Ice Cream
1 cup heavy cream 1 cup thin cream 2 cups orange juice
This is one of Farmer's shorthand entries: an ingredient list that assumes you have read the general directions for freezing at the head of the chapter. Two things need saying before anything else — the sugar is missing, and the acid will curdle the cream if you are careless about how you combine them.
- Sugar is not optionalAs printed there is no sweetener at all, which would give a hard, icy, sour block rather than ice cream. A mixture of this size wants roughly 1 to 1 1/2 cups of sugar, dissolved in the juice before it meets the cream; sugar controls the freezing point as much as the flavour.
- Thin cream"Thin cream" in this book is light or table cream, around 18-20 percent fat — half-and-half is the nearest supermarket equivalent. "Heavy cream" is what we still call heavy or whipping cream, about 36 percent.
- The hinge: acid and dairyTwo cups of orange juice against two cups of cream is a lot of acid. Have both thoroughly chilled, sweeten the juice first, and combine them slowly while stirring. Warm cream, or a fast dump of juice, is where curdling is likeliest.
- JuiceUse fresh-squeezed and strain out the pulp and membrane, which freeze into tough flecks. Grated zest rubbed into the sugar and left half an hour adds the aroma that juice alone loses in the cold.
- FreezingThe entry leans on the chapter's general directions for a crank freezer packed with crushed ice and rock salt, usually about three parts ice to one part salt. In a modern machine, churn 20-25 minutes, then harden in the freezer 3-4 hours.
- YieldThe liquids come to a quart, nearer five cups once sugar is dissolved, so four to six servings. It is best the day it is made -- with no eggs or stabiliser it turns coarse and grainy after a day or two.
Ice creams made from nothing but cream, sugar and flavouring were called Philadelphia ice creams, as against the cooked, egg-thickened "French" or custard sort. This orange version belongs to the Philadelphia camp: no cooking, no eggs, nothing to do but combine and freeze, which is why the entry is three lines long and expects the reader to have absorbed the chapter's general freezing directions already. Oranges reached northern American kitchens by rail and steamer in quantity through the later nineteenth century, and they turn up freely in ices, sherbets and creams — a fruit still faintly luxurious but no longer remarkable.