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French Ice-Cream
6 egg-yolks
¾ cup sugar
5 cups medium cream
Vanilla bean
Scald the cream with a piece of vanilla bean. Beat the egg-yolks, add the sugar and pour the cream slowly on the mixture, beating constantly. Cook in a double boiler until it thickens, watching it carefully. Cool and freeze.
A plain stirred custard base — what would now be called a French-style or crème anglaise ice-cream. The whole recipe hinges on the double boiler: the custard has to thicken without the yolks scrambling.
- The hinge: how far to cook the custard"Until it thickens" means until it coats the back of a spoon and holds a line drawn through it, about 170-175F. Above roughly 180F the yolks curdle. A double boiler makes this hard to get wrong, but it is slow; stir constantly and do not walk away.
- Medium creamAn old dairy grade of roughly 20-25 percent fat, between today's light and heavy cream. Half heavy cream and half whole milk, for 5 cups total, comes closest; equal parts heavy and light cream will run a little richer.
- Vanilla bean"A piece" is vague; a 2-3 inch length of split bean is right for 5 cups, or a whole bean if you want it pronounced. Scald, then let it steep off the heat for 15-20 minutes before proceeding. Two teaspoons of extract stirred in after cooking will do instead.
- Strain and chillPour the finished custard through a fine sieve to catch any set egg and the bean, then chill thoroughly — at least four hours, preferably overnight. "Cool and freeze" assumed the mixture sat in an icebox; a warm base churns badly and gives a coarse, icy texture.
- FreezingThe original assumed a hand-crank freezer packed with cracked ice and rock salt, roughly three parts ice to one of salt, cranked 15-20 minutes. In a modern machine, churn until it holds the texture of soft-serve, then harden two to three hours in the freezer.
- YieldAbout 1½ quarts, serving eight to ten. The sugar is modest by current standards, which makes for a firmer, less sweet cream — worth tasting the cold base before churning, since sweetness reads weaker when frozen.
"French ice-cream" has long been the American trade term for a frozen custard built on egg yolks, as distinguished from "Philadelphia" ice-cream, which is nothing but cream, sugar and flavoring. The distinction is generally traced to the late nineteenth century and still governs labeling in the United States, where a frozen dessert must carry a minimum proportion of egg yolk to be sold as French or custard style. In an era of hand-crank freezers, the yolks act as an emulsifier and keep the texture smooth even when the churning is uneven. The recipe calls for the vanilla bean rather than extract, and scalding a bean in the cream was a reliable route to flavor at a time when extract was widely adulterated.