No. 3458

Vanilla Ice Creams—Italian Meringue

Cremes Vanille--Meringue Italienne

Vanilla (No. 1).—Boil two quarts of milk; remove and add a large vanilla bean split in two through its length; cover the saucepan and leave infuse for fifteen minutes. Beat twelve raw egg-yolks in a vessel with one pound of powdered sugar, diluting gradually with the hot milk; strain into a tinned basin; place over a moderate fire, stirring continually until it thickens, without boiling, and pass it at once through a sieve into a glazed vessel; stir several times while cooling. Pour this composition into a spherical freezer packed in salted ice; turn the freezer around and with the spatula remove any particles of cream that may adhere against the sides. Fifteen to twenty minutes will suffice to congeal and thicken the preparation, then take it up with a spoon and lay it in a small long freezer buried in salted ice. Work it vigorously with the spatula, turning the box around on itself. Fine ices require to be well worked. Various vanilla ice creams may be prepared the same, only changing their proportions.

Vanilla Ice Cream with Milk and Cream (No. 2.)--Boil a pint of milk in which is infused half a vanilla stick. Beat in a vessel ten egg-yolks with ten ounces of sugar; finish the same as in No. 1; when the preparation is cold add one pint of fresh cream, then freeze.

Vanilla Ice Cream with Cream (No. 3).—Have a quart of boiling cream with half a vanilla bean infused therein. Whip eight egg-yolks with six ounces of sugar; pour over the cream, cook and finish as in No. 1.

Vanilla Ice Cream without Cream or Milk (No. 4).—Infuse a vanilla bean in eight gills of syrup at twenty degrees. Break eighteen raw egg-yolks in a tin basin, dilute with the syrup and cook while stirring steadily over a slow fire until the mixture covers the spatula, then pass it through a sieve, leave till cold and freeze. Cook a quarter of a pound of sugar to "large ball" (No. 171), mix it slowly with two stiffly beaten egg-whites, leave stand till cold, then incorporate this meringue gradually into the ice cream.

Vanilla Snow Ice Cream, Italian Meringue and Whipped Cream (No. 5).—Beat five egg-yolks to a stiff froth; mix in slowly one pound of sugar cooked to "small ball" (No. 171) and a vanilla bean split lengthwise in two; let cool. Whip a quart of cream; when very firm drain on a sieve and mix it in lightly with the Italian meringue.

Roman Vanilla Ice Cream, Syrup and Cream (No. 6).—Put sixteen raw egg-yolks in a tinned basin; pour over eight gills of syrup at twenty degrees into which has been infused a split vanilla bean; beat well with a small whip, place it on a slow fire and continue stirring with the spatula until cooked and of a sufficient thickness to cover the spatula; remove, cool and add a quart of fresh cream before freezing.

Light Vanilla Ice Cream, Milk and Whipped Cream (No. 7).—Beat up a quart of cream; drain it on a hair sieve; add ten ounces of powdered sugar to twelve raw egg-yolks in a basin; beat and moisten with a pint of boiling milk into which has been infused a vanilla bean split down in two; set the basin on a slow fire and stir continuously until the mixture covers the spatula; then remove, strain and leave till cold. Freeze as usual and after the cream has congealed mix into it the same quantity of the whipped cream.

Vanilla Ice Cream (No. 8).—Two quarts of milk, two vanilla sticks, two and a half pounds of sugar, twenty-four egg-yolks. Cook, cool and add two quarts of cream; strain, then freeze.

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For the Modern Kitchen

Eight vanilla ice creams in one entry, ranging from a plain milk custard to a still-frozen semifreddo. They share one method — cook the yolks into a custard, chill it hard, then work it constantly while it freezes — and differ only in richness.

The hinge: work it"Fine ices require to be well worked" is the whole instruction. Constant agitation while the mix freezes is what keeps ice crystals small; a churn does this for you, and most of these bases will run in a domestic machine (No. 5 excepted -- see below). Ranhofer's spherical freezer set in salted ice froze the mass quickly, then it was scraped into a second box and beaten by hand.
Salted iceIf you are freezing without a machine, the classic proportion is about three parts crushed ice to one part coarse rock salt, which brings the bath well below 32F. Table salt works but dissolves too fast to hold the temperature.
Gills and quartsA gill is half a cup, so eight gills is one quart. American quarts are 32 fl oz throughout this book.
Syrup at twenty degreesThat is 20 degrees Baumé, measured with a saccharometer — a light syrup of roughly 36 percent sugar by weight, or about one part sugar to two parts water. If you have no hydrometer, dissolving 1 lb of sugar in a scant quart of water and boiling briefly lands close enough.
Small ball and large ballRanhofer's sugar degrees correspond roughly to 238-240F for small ball and 245-250F for large ball. Use a thermometer; the finger tests these terms describe were never precise and are not worth reviving.
Custard temperature"Thickens without boiling" means about 175-180F, when the custard coats the spatula. Above that the yolks curdle. Straining immediately, as directed, catches any that have.
VesselsA "tinned basin" and a "glazed vessel" both mean nonreactive — stainless or enamel today, not bare aluminum or cast iron, which discolor an egg custard.
VanillaScrape the seeds in along with the pod. Extract can replace the bean, but add it to the cold custard rather than the hot milk.
No. 5 is not churnedYolks beaten with hot syrup and lightened with drained whipped cream is effectively a semifreddo; it is better frozen still, in a mold, then sliced. (The heading says "Italian Meringue," but the text calls for yolks.)
Yield and scalingNo. 1 makes roughly three quarts and No. 8 well over a gallon -- banquet quantities. Quarter them for a household machine. Resist cutting the sugar much; it depresses the freezing point and is part of why these stay scoopable.
Rest the baseRanhofer freezes as soon as the custard is cold. An overnight chill in the refrigerator hydrates the proteins and gives a noticeably smoother ice.

A Little History

The Epicurean (1894) is Charles Ranhofer's record of thirty-odd years as chef at Delmonico's in New York, and this entry shows the French kitchen's habit of cataloguing rather than choosing: one flavor, eight formulas, graded by how much cream and egg the occasion warrants. The distinctions are technical — a custard on milk, a custard on syrup, a pâte à bombe folded with whipped cream. "Italian meringue" is the standard French term for whites beaten with boiling sugar syrup rather than baked dry; the reason for the adjective is not documented, though it is often said to describe the method rather than an Italian origin. All of it depended on harvested natural ice, packed with salt in wooden pot-freezers, which is why the instructions dwell so much on scraping the sides and turning the box: the cook's arm was the only thing standing between a fine ice and a coarse one.