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Portuguese Ice-Cream
Put one-fourth pound of sugar into a pan, set it on the fire and stir it until it begins to boil; then place it in the oven to bake. Remove it when done, and add a stick of bruised cinnamon, and the thin rind of a lemon. Put it back in the oven and let it remain for a few minutes longer; pour one-half pint of water into a basin containing the yolks of ten eggs, one and one-half pints of milk, and one pound of caster-sugar; stir these well together and pour into the pan on the fire, stir until it thickens, and then pass through a fine sieve into a bowl or basin. Add one wineglassful of curacoa, place the basin on the ice to freeze the contents, and just before it is completed mix in one breakfast cupful of well-whipped cream, three ounces of sliced pistachios, and the same quantity of finely-minced candied orange-peel. When it has frozen sufficiently, it is ready to be served.
A caramel-and-egg-yolk custard scented with cinnamon and lemon, frozen and finished with whipped cream, pistachios and candied peel. The instructions assume a cook who already knows how to make caramel and a custard, so the sequence needs unpacking.
- The hinge: do not let the custard boilTen yolks in about two pints of liquid will thicken between 170 and 180F and scramble not far above that. Stir constantly over gentle heat until it coats the spoon, then strain immediately — the sieve step in the original removes the cinnamon and rind and will also catch any threads that form.
- "Set it on the fire... then place it in the oven"This is a dry caramel: the quarter pound of sugar is melted and cooked to colour in the pan, then held in the oven — no heat is specified — so it stays fluid while the cinnamon and lemon rind infuse. Modern practice is simply to keep the pan on very low heat rather than moving it in and out of the oven.
- Archaic measuresA wineglassful is about 2 fl oz. A breakfast cupful is roughly 8 to 10 fl oz — generous, and larger than a teacup, which is the other cup measure common in period books. Caster sugar is superfine sugar; ordinary granulated dissolves adequately in a hot custard.
- The sugar is very highA pound of caster sugar plus the caramel against two pints of dairy and water is far sweeter than a modern ice cream, and that much sugar depresses the freezing point badly — the mixture will stay soft and slushy. Halving the caster sugar gives a base that freezes firm and tastes of custard rather than syrup.
- Lemon rind"Thin rind" means pared zest with no white pith, from an unwaxed lemon. It goes into the hot caramel to infuse and is strained out with the cinnamon stick at the sieve stage.
- Freezing"Place the basin on the ice" means setting the vessel in packed ice and rock salt to freeze, stirring as it sets. Chill the strained custard thoroughly first, then churn in an ice cream machine; fold in the whipped cream, pistachios and candied orange peel near the end, as the original directs, and firm it in the freezer for a few hours.
- CuracaoAny decent orange liqueur works. Alcohol also softens the set, which is a second reason to pull back on the sugar if you want a scoopable result.
- YieldRoughly 2 quarts, serving eight to ten in the small portions of the period.
Oscar Tschirky's 1896 book records the repertoire of the original Waldorf, and its ice cream chapter ranges over the era's fashionable nationalities. The name here is earned by the composition rather than by any single Lisbon original: heavy egg-yolk custards perfumed with cinnamon stick and lemon peel are the signature of Portuguese sweet-making, a tradition generally traced to convent kitchens that used enormous quantities of yolks and turned them into doces such as fios de ovos. Ten yolks to two pints of liquid is squarely in that idiom. The curacao, pistachios and candied orange peel are the sort of finish that distinguished a restaurant ice from a domestic one at a time when freezing anything at all meant a pail, cracked ice and rock salt.