Chocolate Ice-Cream

This is a moulded ice, not a churned one: the mixture is chilled over ice, packed into a mould, and set in an ice-and-salt bath to freeze solid without stirring. The gelatine is what keeps it from turning into a block of ice crystals.

• The gelatine figure is ambiguousFive ounces of dry gelatine in three pints of cream would set to rubber. "Dissolved gelatine" may mean five ounces of gelatine solution rather than dry sheet, but the recipe does not say. Read as written it does not work; treat the amount as unspecified and use only enough to give a light set.
• "Vanilla cream"Presumably the vanilla ice-cream base given elsewhere in the book: a sweetened vanilla-flavoured cream or custard, not plain heavy cream. No sugar is listed here, so whatever sweetness the finished ice has must come from the base.
• The chocolateMost likely plain unsweetened block chocolate rather than a sweetened one, since the recipe adds no sugar of its own. If you use modern semisweet or milk chocolate the result will be sweeter than intended against an already sugared base.
• Melting "over the fire"Direct heat scorches chocolate. Melt it in a bowl over barely simmering water, and add the cream a few spoonfuls at a time, working smooth after each addition — poured in fast, the chocolate seizes into grit that will not disperse.
• Strain before freezingThe original does not say so, but pass the mixture through a fine sieve once the gelatine is in. It catches any set threads of gelatine and unmelted chocolate, which freeze into unpleasant specks.
• "Stir over the ice"An ice-water bath, stirred until the mixture is cold and slightly thickened. Skipping this and moulding a warm mixture gives a coarse, watery texture.
• Freezing without a churn"a mould packed with ice" means a covered mould buried in ice; the recipe does not mention salt, though ice alone will not take the mixture below freezing, so a salted ice pack (the usual practice being roughly three parts crushed ice to one of coarse salt) is implied. Allow several hours. A modern freezer will do the same job more slowly; an ice-cream machine will give a lighter result but a less clean unmoulding.
• Yield and servingThree pints of base plus the chocolate and gelatine comes to a scant two quarts, and with no churning there is no overrun to increase it; call it eight to ten servings. Dip the mould briefly in cool water to turn it out, and let the slices stand a few minutes — gelatine-set ices are firm straight from the cold.