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Fruit Ice-Cream
Dissolve in the strained juice of three lemons, a quarter of a pound of sugar, and mix with it one wineglassful each of sherry and grape syrup and one pint of cream. Stir the mixture well, then turn it into the freezer, and work it until frozen, Mix with the cream a quarter of a pound of preserved fruits cut into small pieces, turn all into a mould, cover, and pack it in pounded salt and ice for an hour or so. Dip the mould quickly into hot water to loosen the cream, wipe it, and turn the contents onto a fancy dish.
An uncooked, eggless ice cream that depends on hand-crank equipment and a salt-and-ice pack for its final set. The mixture is unusually acidic and unusually alcoholic, and both facts shape how it behaves.
- The hinge: acid meets creamThree lemons' juice plus sherry poured into a pint of cream will curdle it if the cream is warm or if the acid goes in fast. Dissolve the sugar in the juice first, chill everything hard, then whisk the acid mixture into the cold cream in a thin stream.
- A wineglassfulRoughly 2 fl oz in period American usage, so about 1/4 cup each of sherry and grape syrup. Four ounces of liquid in total, of which the sherry is alcohol.
- Alcohol and freezingSherry lowers the freezing point, so this will churn soft and tend to stay soft. The mould packed in salt and ice for an hour "or so" is where the real firming happens, whatever else it does.
- SugarA quarter pound is about 1/2 cup plus a tablespoon of granulated sugar. Taste the base before churning, as lemon juice varies widely and the grape syrup sweetens it further.
- Grape syrupA sweetened, reduced grape juice, closer to a thick cordial than to jelly. Boiled-down Concord grape juice, or a grape molasses, stands in for it.
- "The freezer"A wooden bucket with an inner canister turned by hand in a packing of crushed ice and coarse salt. Any modern churn does the same work; "work it until frozen" means to the stage of soft-serve.
- Preserved fruitsA quarter pound of candied or brandied fruit, chopped small and folded in at the end of churning, not blended through the base. Chill the pieces first or they will melt channels into the ice cream.
- Moulding and unmouldingPack the covered mould in crushed ice and coarse salt, seam sealed with butter or plastic film so brine cannot seep in; a home freezer will also set it, though give it several hours and judge by feel. A quick dip in hot water and a wipe is still the correct release.
- YieldAbout a quart, serving six.
Oscar Tschirky, who is often said to have run the dining rooms of the Waldorf-Astoria, is traditionally associated with this recipe, from the height of the moulded-dessert era, when a frozen sweet was expected to arrive shaped and turned out whole onto a "fancy dish." This is not a custard ice cream but the older Anglo-American type — cream, sugar, fruit juice and fortified wine, frozen and then ripened in a brine pack — and the sherry and preserved fruits place it in the family of bombes and moulded creams that filled the last course of long banquet menus. Grape syrup, now largely gone from kitchens, was a standard sweet flavouring sold alongside raspberry and orange syrups for ices, sodas and puddings. The two-stage method, churn then pack, was practical: an hour in the pack was what turned a soft-frozen cream into something firm enough to hold a shape.