No. 3449

Chocolate and Cocoa Ice Cream

Creme au Chocolat et au Cacao

Dissolve in a very slack oven four ounces of unsweetened chocolate in two gills of hot water. Beat twelve egg-yolks in a tinned basin with one pound of powdered sugar and dilute the preparation with a pint and a half of boiling milk, adding the fourth part of a vanilla stick. Stir the cream on a moderate fire till nearly thick, then mix in the chocolate thoroughly dissolved with three gills of hot cream; stir well for a few moments, remove and strain twice through a sieve into a metal vessel; when cold transfer to a sorbetiere to freeze.

Chocolate--Another Way.—Two pounds of fine sweet chocolate, two quarts of milk, half a vanilla bean, two pounds of sugar and twenty-four yolks; cook, let get cold and then add two quarts of fresh cream and freeze.

With Cocoa.—Boil a pint and a half of milk, add ten ounces of torrefied cocoa, and a quarter of a vanilla stick; leave to infuse for two hours. Mix five egg-yolks, ten ounces of sugar and the infusion in a tinned basin; cook over a slow fire, stirring incessantly until the preparation covers the spoon; remove, cool partly and add one pint of raw fresh cream; stram, freeze and serve, mixing in a few chocolate pastilles.

← No. 3448 Columbia Ice Cream Ices & Ice Creams No. 3450 Cinnamon, Ginger or Pumpernickel Rye Bread I →

For the Modern Kitchen

Ranhofer gives three versions of the same idea: a rich cooked egg custard flavored with chocolate or cocoa, then churned. The hinge is the custard itself — cook it to a nappe and no further, since twelve to twenty-four yolks will scramble the moment they pass about 180F.

UnitsA gill is half a cup, so two gills of water is 1 cup and three gills of cream is 1½ cups. A pint and a half of milk is 3 cups. The first version comes to roughly two quarts of finished cream, the second closer to a gallon — worth halving or quartering for a modern machine.
"A very slack oven"The coolest part of a cooling range; period usage puts a slack oven somewhere around 200-300F, and here it serves only to melt chocolate gently. A bowl set over barely simmering water does the same thing with less risk of seizing.
Tinned basin and sorbetiereA tinned copper bowl, chosen because tin does not react with eggs and acid; stainless steel is the direct equivalent. The sorbetiere is the hand-cranked freezing pail — any modern churn works, and the custard must be thoroughly cold before it goes in.
"Torrefied cocoa"From the French torrefie, roasted. Ten ounces of it steeped in 3 cups of milk is an enormous proportion by modern habit; today's fine Dutch-process or natural cocoa is far more soluble and intensely flavored, and 3–4 ounces will carry the same weight of flavor without turning the base gritty.
"Fine sweet chocolate"In 1894 this meant a sweetened eating chocolate, not baking chocolate. The second version pairs two pounds of it with two pounds of sugar, which reads cloying now — if you use modern dark chocolate at 60–70 percent, cut the sugar by at least a third and taste the cold base before freezing.
"Until the preparation covers the spoon"The nappe test: the custard clings in an even film and a finger drawn across leaves a clean track, somewhere around 170-180F. Ranhofer's "nearly thick" in the first version means the same point, reached over a moderate rather than a fierce fire.
Vanilla stickA vanilla bean. A quarter or half a bean, split and scraped, infused in the hot milk; strain it out with the custard. The instruction to strain twice is not fussiness — it catches both bean debris and any threads of set egg.
Chocolate pastillesSmall flat discs of chocolate, folded in at the end of churning. Modern feves or chopped chocolate do the job; add them once the ice cream is stiff so they stay distinct.
ServingNo yield is given. The first version fills about two quarts, generous for eight to ten. Churned custard this rich sets hard, so let it stand a few minutes out of the freezer before scooping.

A Little History

The Epicurean (1894) is Charles Ranhofer's summary of some thirty years as chef at Delmonico's in New York, and its ices section is enormous because frozen desserts were the showpiece course of the American banquet in that period. Chocolate is one of the older ice cream flavors on record — frozen chocolate creams appear in Italian and French confectionery manuals well before the nineteenth century — and Ranhofer treats it as a base recipe with variations rather than a novelty. The three versions here are a small lesson in professional practice: one built on unsweetened chocolate and water, one on sweetened eating chocolate at banquet scale, and one on cocoa infused in milk, which gives a lighter, drier flavor because the cocoa butter has largely been pressed out. The word sorbetiere points to the pail-and-dasher freezer worked by hand in a bed of ice and coarse salt, still the standard equipment in a hotel kitchen of the 1890s.