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Almond and Raspberry Ice-Cream
Blanch, peel and pound half a pound of Jordan almonds and half an ounce of bitter almonds. Boil three pints of cream or half milk and half cream, pour it into a stewpan and let it cool; then stir in half a pound of finely-powdered sugar, and when that is quite dissolved, beat it up sharply and stir in the yolks of twelve eggs, stirring over the fire without allowing it to boil, until the mixture thickens; add quickly the pounded almonds, and a tablespoonful of kirsch; strain the whole through a tammy cloth into a basin. Then mix one quart of raspberry juice and one quart of syrup at eighteen degrees by the saccharometer, or take two quarts of raspberry syrup made without vinegar, and strain through a sieve if necessary. Freeze these two mixtures in separate pots, and serve in layers.
The custard base is a conventional crème anglaise scaled for a hotel kitchen, but the flavouring is the problem: half an ounce of bitter almonds is not a period quirk that can be scaled down or cooked out.
- Bitter almondsBitter almond kernels contain amygdalin, which enzymes in the crushed nut convert to hydrogen cyanide as soon as they meet moisture. Pounding them raw, as directed here, is precisely the step that liberates it, and the almonds are stirred in after the custard leaves the fire, which the recipe warns must never boil. Unprocessed bitter almonds cannot legally be sold as food in the United States, and half an ounce is on the order of a dozen kernels stirred into a dessert served cold. Use a current ice-cream recipe instead.
- Jordan almondsNot the sugar-shelled confection. In nineteenth-century usage Jordan almonds are large sweet almonds, historically from Málaga, valued for confectionery; the name is generally traced to a corruption of jardin rather than to the river.
- Eighteen degrees by the saccharometerAlmost certainly a Baumé reading, the sugar-density scale of the professional pastry kitchen, though the recipe does not name the scale. Eighteen degrees Baumé is roughly 33 to 35 percent sugar by weight, the usual strength for a fruit ice — enough sugar that it sets soft rather than solid.
- Tammy clothA worsted or fine woollen straining cloth, wrung between two people to force custard through. A fine sieve or chinois does the same work.
- Freezing in potsThe "pots" are the canisters of hand-cranked ice-and-salt freezers, worked separately because the recipe directs the two mixtures to be served in layers. Nothing in the method depends on the almond flavouring.
- ScaleThree pints of cream, twelve yolks and two quarts of fruit syrup is hotel output — something on the order of a gallon of finished ice, or twenty-five to thirty servings.
- Raspberry syrup "made without vinegar"A real distinction at the time: raspberry shrub and raspberry vinegar were common pantry syrups, and using one by mistake would have curdled the note of the fruit layer against the custard.
Oscar Tschirky ran the dining rooms of the Waldorf, and his 1896 book reads like a working brigade's reference rather than a home cookbook — hence the saccharometer readings, the tammy cloth and the twelve-yolk batches. Layered ices of this kind, a rich almond custard set against a bright fruit water-ice and moulded in bands, are usually traced to the French glace panachy well have reached American luxury hotels along the lines often suggested for the 1880s and 1890s. Bitter almonds were then a standard flavouring in the confectioner's cupboard, used in tiny proportion to sweet almonds for the marzipan-and-cherry note now supplied by almond extract or, in this recipe, partly by the kirsch; their toxicity was known but not regulated, and it is one of the clearest markers of how far food safety practice has moved since Oscar's day.