No. 3446

Andalusian Ice Cream—Without Cooking

Creme a l'Andalouse--Sans Cuisson

Pour in a vessel one pint of cream, one pint of orange juice, twelve ounces of sugar and half an orange peel; infuse this for one hour, then strain through a silk sieve and freeze, mixing in a little orange flower water added to a little syrup; work the ice well, pack in cracked ice and salt, and use when needed.

← No. 3445 Ice Cream a la Cialdini Ices & Ice Creams No. 3447 Caramel Ice Cream →

For the Modern Kitchen

A no-cook ice cream in the Philadelphia style: no eggs, no custard, just cream, juice and sugar. The whole thing hinges on how you combine the acid and the dairy.

Acid and creamA pint of orange juice can curdle a pint of cream, especially if the cream is cold and the mixing brisk. Have both at cool room temperature, dissolve the sugar in the juice first, and stir the juice into the cream slowly. Slight graininess will disappear once churned; visible curds will not.
MeasuresA pint is 2 cups. Twelve ounces of sugar is weight, not volume — about 1 2/3 cups granulated. That is a high sugar ratio, and deliberately so: it keeps an eggless, juice-heavy base from freezing into a solid block.
Half an orange peelHalf the peel of one orange, pared thin with no white pith, which is bitter. It is there only for the hour-long infusion and comes out at the straining.
Silk sieveAny fine-mesh strainer does the job. The point is to remove peel, pulp and membrane so the finished ice is smooth rather than fibrous.
Orange flower waterStill sold, and potent — start with 1/2 teaspoon whisked into a few tablespoons of simple syrup and taste. More than a teaspoon in this quantity tastes of soap.
FreezingChill the strained base thoroughly, then run it in an ice cream maker. "Work the ice well" means keep it churning until thick; an eggless base needs the agitation to stay fine-textured.
Packing in ice and saltThe original packs the finished ice in cracked ice and salt and holds it until wanted. A covered container in the freezer does the same, though this one is best eaten within a day — the juice will make it icy after that.
YieldTwo pints of liquid plus the sugar, so upwards of a quart and a half once churned. It sets softer and more sherbet-like than a custard ice cream.

A Little History

This comes from Charles Ranhofer's The Epicurean (1894), the enormous record of his years as chef at Delmonico's in New York, where the ices section alone runs to dozens of numbered formulas. Sans cuisson — "without cooking" — marks it out from the egg-custard bases that surround it: cream, fruit and sugar only, the approach American cooks later called Philadelphia-style. The name à l'Andalouse is usually explained as a nod to southern Spain, Andalusia being long associated with the orange groves around Seville, and the orange flower water points the same way, distilled orange blossom having long been a flavouring in Spanish and North African sweets. That it needs no stove is the practical point: in a period kitchen the labour was all in the ice, cracked by hand and packed with rock salt in a wooden freezer.