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Peach Ice-Cream
1 pint milk
2 egg-yolks
2 tablespoons flour
1 cup heavy cream
2 tablespoons water
2 cups peach-pulp and juice
1 cup sugar
Make custard as directed for vanilla ice-cream. When cool, add the peach -pulp and juice, and freeze.
A flour-thickened custard base with fresh peach folded in at the end — the standard American "Philadelphia-style" compromise before eggs alone were trusted to hold a frozen custard together. The recipe assumes you have already read the vanilla ice-cream entry, which does the actual work.
- The missing methodThe book sends you to its vanilla ice-cream entry, which is not reproduced here; from the ingredients the sequence would run: scald the pint of milk, whisk the flour smooth with the 2 tablespoons water, stir it into the hot milk with the sugar and cook until thickened, then temper into the beaten yolks and cook a minute or two more. Cool completely before the fruit goes in.
- Add the peach cold, and lastThis is the hinge. Peach pulp is acidic enough to curdle a warm custard and to thin a hot starch-thickened one. The instruction "when cool" is not a convenience — chill the base thoroughly, ideally overnight.
- The creamThe 1 cup heavy cream is not in the instructions but belongs in the base; whip it lightly or add it cold to the chilled custard before churning. Modern heavy cream at around 36 percent fat is a reasonable stand-in, though period cream varied in richness.
- Peach-pulp and juiceTwo cups means about 4 to 6 medium ripe peaches, skinned and mashed or briefly pulsed — not puréed to liquid. A tablespoon of lemon juice keeps the colour from browning.
- Flour, not cornstarchTwo tablespoons of flour in a pint of milk is a deliberate choice: it makes a stable base that resists the coarse ice crystals of a hand-cranked freezer. It will taste faintly pasty if undercooked, so give the custard a full two minutes at a simmer.
- "Freeze" meant a churnThe original assumes a bucket freezer packed with cracked ice and rock salt, roughly three parts ice to one part salt, cranked 20 to 30 minutes. Any modern churn works; expect 20 to 25 minutes, then harden in the freezer for two hours.
- SweetnessOne cup of sugar suits firm, tart market peaches. Very ripe fruit can take a quarter less — but do not cut it far, since sugar is what keeps churned ice-cream from freezing rock hard.
- YieldAbout 1½ quarts, serving six to eight. Best within two days; the flour base stiffens and dulls after that.
Peach was, with strawberry and vanilla, one of the three fixed points of the American ice-cream repertoire, and the one most tied to a season — before commercial freezing, peach ice-cream existed for the few weeks the local orchards were in. The Butterick book, published by the pattern company as part of its broad move into household advice for middle-class women, treats ice-cream as an ordinary domestic accomplishment rather than a confectioner's trick, which by the 1900s it was: the crank freezer with its inner can and salted ice jacket had been in wide household use since the mid-nineteenth century. The flour-and-egg custard here reflects home practice rather than professional: flour was forgiving of an inexperienced hand and of an unevenly cranked freezer.