Home › Ice-Creams and Ices › Condensed Milk Ice Cream
Condensed Milk Ice Cream
When cream is scarce condensed milk is sometimes used as a substitute. This recipe will make two quarts of the frozen cream: One can of condensed milk; one tablespoon of vanilla; one and one-half pints of sweet milk; two eggs (yolks); one tablespoon of powdered sugar. Scald all the milk together and turn over the beaten yolks of the eggs. Return to the kettle and cook until creamy. Add the sugar and when cold add the extract and freeze.
A thrifty custard base from the era before home freezers, when cream was seasonal and expensive but a tin of condensed milk kept indefinitely on the shelf. Nothing here is difficult; the details that matter are the ingredient names and the churning.
- Condensed milk means sweetenedThis is sweetened condensed milk, not evaporated. A modern can is 14 oz; period tins varied in size, so the match is approximate. Evaporated milk is unsweetened and will give a thin, barely sweet result.
- Sweet milkPlain whole milk. The term distinguished it from sour or buttermilk, both of which were normal kitchen staples then. Use whole milk; skim will freeze hard and icy.
- Why only a tablespoon of sugarThe condensed milk carries most of the sweetening, so do not scale the powdered sugar up expecting a sweeter cream.
- Cook until creamyThis is a stirred custard. Hold it over moderate heat, stirring, until it coats the back of a spoon, roughly 170-175F. Past about 180F the yolks scramble and the base turns grainy.
- KettleA saucepan, not a tea kettle. A heavy-bottomed pan or a double boiler gives more margin on the custard.
- Add the extract when coldVanilla is volatile and a good deal of it flashes off in a hot pan. Chill the base thoroughly first, ideally overnight, which also improves the final texture.
- FreezeThe original assumes a hand-crank churn packed with ice and rock salt. Any modern ice cream maker works. Without one, freeze in a shallow pan and beat thoroughly every 30 minutes until set.
- YieldTwo quarts is optimistic and assumes generous overrun from hard cranking. Expect closer to 1.5 quarts from a domestic machine. Let it harden in the freezer an hour or two before serving.
Condensed milk moved from a novelty to a pantry staple in the second half of the nineteenth century, its commercial success generally traced to Gail Borden's vacuum-pan process and the enormous demand for shelf-stable milk during the American Civil War. By the time the Butterick Publishing Company issued its cook book, a tin cost little and kept in any cupboard, while cream still meant either a farm connection or a daily delivery and a cold larder. That is exactly the situation the headnote names: when cream is scarce. The recipe is a piece of practical substitution rather than a luxury, written for households that owned an ice-cream freezer but not necessarily a reliable supply of cream to fill it.