Home › Puddings and Pudding Sauces › Ice Cream (One quart milk seven eggs)
Ice Cream (One quart milk seven eggs)
One quart milk, seven eggs, yolks and whites beaten separately, four cups of sugar, two quarts of sweet cream, six tablespoonfuls of flavoring. Scald the milk in a double boiler, beat the yolks extra white, add the sugar and beat a little longer, run little by little, add the boiling milk, beating continuously, stir in the well-beaten white of eggs, return to the boiler and cook until as thick as boiled custard, stirring steadily; take off fire, and when quite cool stir in the cream and flavoring; then freeze.
A large-batch cooked-custard ice cream, sized for a hand-crank freezer rather than a countertown machine. The proportions are sound; the quantities and the flavoring are the two things that need adjusting.
- YieldThree quarts of dairy plus four cups of sugar and seven eggs makes roughly four quarts of mix, and more than that once air is churned in. Most domestic machines take one to two quarts of mix at a time, so plan to churn in batches or scale the whole recipe to a quarter.
- "Sweet cream"This means fresh, unsoured cream, as opposed to the naturally soured cream a household would also have on hand. Use heavy cream; the mix is rich enough that half-and-half will give a thinner, icier result.
- Custard temperature"As thick as boiled custard" is roughly 170-175F on a thermometer, when the mixture coats a spoon and holds a line drawn through it. Above 180F it curdles, and with the beaten whites folded in there is little margin, so keep the double boiler water at a bare simmer.
- "Beat the yolks extra white"Possibly a slip for "extra light," though period recipes do sometimes describe beating yolks until pale as beating them white; either way, beat the yolks pale and thick before the sugar goes in. Tempering matters here: add the scalded milk in a thin stream while beating, exactly as written, or the yolks scramble.
- The beaten whitesWhites in an ice cream base is old-fashioned practice and gives a lighter, slightly foamy set closer to a frozen mousse. Fold them in off the heat and expect the custard to thicken faster and less evenly than a yolk-only base.
- Six tablespoons of flavoringAcross roughly four quarts of mix this works out to about a tablespoon and a half per quart, broadly in line with modern practice. Taste the cold mix before freezing and adjust.
- Chill properly"When quite cool" is doing a lot of work. Refrigerate the custard until thoroughly cold, ideally overnight, before adding cream and churning -- a warm base freezes coarse and grainy.
- SugarFour cups across three quarts of dairy is sweet but not absurd, since sugar also keeps the ice cream scoopable. Cutting it much below three cups will give a harder, more brick-like result straight from the freezer.
Custard-based ice creams like this one belong to the era of the hand-crank freezer, patented in the United States in the mid-nineteenth century and common in middle-class kitchens by the time cookbooks of this kind were being compiled. The pail of cracked ice and coarse salt did the work while somebody turned the handle. Ice cream of this sort was understood as a boiled custard, the same base used for a floating island or a trifle, that happened to be frozen rather than served warm. The instruction to beat yolks and whites separately, common in nineteenth-century American recipes, reflects a kitchen without mechanical refrigeration or stabilisers, where whipped egg white helped keep a frozen mixture light.