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Vanilla and Chocolate Ice-Cream
Make some white vanilla and some chocolate cream, separately, but make them both of the same consistency. Brush a mould lightly over with oil, rest it slantingly on the ice and pour in a small quantity of the vanilla cream. When that is frozen alter the position of the mould and pour in some of the chocolate cream. When this is frozen proceed as before until the mould is full, changing the position of the mould each time--sometimes leaning to one side and again to another in regular intervals. Then pack the mould in pounded ice for two hours, or till wanted; dip the mould into warm water, turn the contents onto a raised dish, and serve.
This is an assembly instruction rather than a full recipe — Oscar assumes you already have two finished ice creams and a cold larder full of ice. The whole effect depends on freezing each layer solid before the next goes in, so that the diagonal bands hold their line when the mould is turned out.
- The hinge: freeze each layer hardPour a thin layer, return the tilted mould to the freezer, and wait until it is firm to a knife tip before adding the next. If the previous layer is still soft the two creams bleed together and the pattern muddies into a single brown swirl.
- No base recipe is givenYou need to supply the vanilla and chocolate yourself. Use two batches of the same style of ice cream — both custard-based or both Philadelphia-style; the instruction that they be "of the same consistency" is most easily read as making them set and melt at the same rate, though the text does not say so.
- Chocolate freezes softerThe extra sugar usually carried in a chocolate base depresses its freezing point, so it can be looser than the vanilla at the same temperature. Slightly reduce the sugar in the chocolate half, or give it a longer stint in the freezer before you judge it set.
- "Rest it slantingly on the ice"The mould was bedded at whatever angle you wanted in a tub of pounded ice, in period practice usually mixed with coarse salt, though the recipe itself mentions only ice. A freezer does the same work: prop the mould in a loaf pan or a bowl of dried beans to hold the tilt, and set the whole thing on a level shelf.
- Packing for two hoursThe final two-hour pack is a ripening and hardening stage, not part of the layering. In a home freezer at 0F, two to three hours is right; overnight is better, and the mould can be held for a couple of days if wrapped.
- Oiling and unmouldingA neutral oil, wiped almost dry with a cloth, is enough — a heavy coat leaves a greasy film on the finished surface. Dip the mould in warm, not hot, water for five to ten seconds, run a thin knife round the rim, and invert onto a chilled plate.
- Yield and servingThe recipe specifies no mould size or yield; a 1.5-quart mould would give roughly eight to ten servings. Cut in wedges or slices so the diagonal bands show on the cut face, and hold the cut portions in the freezer until the moment of service.
Moulded layered ices of this kind were the standard dinner-party finish in the grand hotels of the late nineteenth century, and a kitchen brigade with an ice house behind it could produce them in dozens of shapes. Oscar Tschirky, the Waldorf's celebrated maître d'hôtel, compiled his 1896 book from that professional world, which is why the instructions assume both a supply of pounded ice and a cook who already knows how to make plain vanilla cream — the skill being sold here is the trick of the tilted mould, not the ice cream. Before mechanical refrigeration, ices were frozen and held in a mixture of crushed ice and salt, harvested in winter from northern lakes and stored in insulated houses through the summer; the two-hour pack at the end of the recipe is simply the contemporary practice of that system, when a finished mould had nowhere to live but a tub of ice until the moment it was wanted.