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Plum Ice-Cream
Put in a basin one quart of freshly-gathered plums, and work in one pound of finely-crushed loaf sugar. When the sugar is quite dissolved, pour over it a quart of cream, and beat well together, passing the mixture through a fine hair-sieve into the freezer, and then turn it into a mould packed with ice until it is quite set, when it may be served.
A raw-fruit ice cream from the era of hand-cranked freezers and salted ice. The method is sound, but two of the ingredients and both of the vessels need translating.
- The hinge: dissolve the sugar first, then add cream lastPlums are acidic, and cream poured onto unsweetened fruit pulp can curdle. Let the sugar draw juice and dissolve completely, then add the cream and churn without delay rather than letting the mixture stand.
- A quart of plumsMeasured whole, roughly 1.5 to 2 lb of small plums or damsons. Halve and pit them and crush or puree before sugaring.
- Loaf sugarRefined sugar sold in a hard cone and broken off as needed. Ordinary granulated sugar substitutes directly; use 1 lb (about 2 1/4 cups) and expect a firm, quite sweet ice, which is what keeps it scoopable without eggs or stabiliser.
- Hair sieveA sieve of woven horsehair, the standard fine sieve of the period; it is often said hair was preferred because metal reacted with acidic fruit. A nylon or stainless fine-mesh sieve does the job; press hard to hold back the skins, which otherwise freeze into tough flecks.
- "The freezer"Not an appliance but a pail-and-canister churn turned by hand in ice and coarse salt. An electric ice-cream maker gives the same result in 20-30 minutes; the mixture should be chilled thoroughly first.
- The mould packed with iceThis is still-freezing to firm the churned cream, the period equivalent of hardening. Two to three hours in a modern freezer in a covered container does it; if you use a metal mould, dip it briefly in warm water to unmould.
- CreamUse heavy cream, or half heavy and half whole milk if you want it lighter.
- YieldAbout 2 quarts, serving 8 to 10.
Oscar Tschirky was the Waldorf's maître d'hôtel rather than its chef, but the 1896 cook book that carries his name collects the house repertoire, and its ice creams show how much of a grand hotel's summer output depended on ice cut from northern lakes and stored in ice houses through the year. Fruit ices of this kind — raw fruit, sugar, cream, no custard base — are often said to belong to an older English tradition than the egg-thickened French style, and they turn entirely on the fruit being at its peak, hence "freshly-gathered." Plums and damsons were a common late-summer choice in American kitchens, and they needed no cooking to give up their juice. Loaf sugar, still specified here, was on its way out: by the 1890s granulated sugar in barrels and bags had largely replaced the hard cone that a cook broke up with sugar nippers.