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Banana Ice-Cream
Mix in a saucepan over the fire the following proportions: One pint of water, three teacupfuls of sugar, and after boiling for twenty minutes, add the pulp of half a dozen bananas, or one or two more, if strong flavor is desired, also adding the well-beaten yolks of three eggs. Stir well for six minutes, then remove from the fire, put in a bowl of cold water, and beat well for ten minutes. When cold, pass it through a tammy-sieve adding a quart of cream, turn the whole into the freezer, and let it remain until frozen, when it is ready for serving.
A cooked custard base sweetened with heavy sugar syrup, written for a hand-crank freezer packed with ice and salt. The proportions work, but two of the measurements need translating and the syrup needs watching.
- TeacupfulIn American books of this period a teacup is reckoned variously at about a half to three-quarters of a cup, so three teacupfuls is roughly 1 1/2 to 2 1/4 cups of sugar. Start at the lower end, since the cream and bananas add sweetness of their own.
- Watch the syrupA pint of water with that much sugar, held at a boil for twenty minutes, will reduce considerably and can begin to colour. Keep it at a gentle boil, and if it thickens past a light syrup stage, add back a little hot water rather than letting it caramelize.
- Tempering the yolksThe yolks go into hot syrup, so add them off the direct heat in a thin stream while whisking, then return the pan to a low flame. Six minutes of steady stirring should bring the mixture to 170-180F, which is where it thickens and the eggs are properly set.
- Tammy-sieveA tammy was a fine worsted cloth used for straining. A fine-mesh sieve, or a sieve lined with a double layer of cheesecloth, does the same job of catching banana fibre and any strands of cooked egg.
- The bananasUse fully ripe fruit, spotted rather than yellow-green, and mash or purée it just before adding. Banana pulp browns quickly on contact with air; a squeeze of lemon in the purée keeps the colour closer to ivory than grey.
- Chill before churning"When cold" means thoroughly cold. The bowl of cold water is the period's shortcut; several hours in the refrigerator gives a base that churns faster and freezes with less ice crystal.
- The freezerAn electric or frozen-bowl churn replaces the ice-and-salt bucket directly. Churn 20 to 30 minutes to soft-serve consistency, then harden in the freezer for two to three hours.
- YieldA quart of cream plus the syrup and fruit gives a little over two quarts finished, about twelve servings. Halving the recipe suits most home machines, which struggle with more than a quart and a half at a time.
Oscar Tschirky ran the dining rooms of the Waldorf, and later the Waldorf-Astoria, from the hotel's opening in 1893; the cookbook that carries his name appeared in 1896 and gathers the kitchen's working formulas alongside menus and service notes. Banana ice-cream belongs to a moment when the fruit had just stopped being a curiosity: regular steamship traffic from Central America and the Caribbean brought bananas into American cities in quantity from the 1870s and 1880s onward, and hotel kitchens were quick to put them into ices, fritters and moulded desserts. The method here is the standard French custard base of the period, thickened with yolks and sweetened with a boiled syrup rather than granulated sugar stirred in cold, which dissolves completely and gives a smoother freeze in a hand-cranked churn.