No. 3460

White Coffee Ice Cream

Creme au Cafe Blanc

Roast very slowly, either in a roaster or in a frying pan, half a pound of good coffee beans, not having them too dark. Boil a pint of milk and pour it over the roasted coffee laid in a saucepan, cover tightly and keep it on the side of the range for half an hour. Put twenty egg-yolks in a saucepan or a tinned copper basin with twelve ounces of powdered sugar and a quarter of a vanilla stick; beat well together and dilute with three pints of milk and the infused coffee; stir this cream on a slow fire to thicken without boiling, and as soon as the preparation has attained the correct consistency transfer it to a well tinned metal vessel and stir occasionally while cooling; strain it twice, the last time through an exceedingly fine sieve. Try a small part in a freezer packed in ice to discover its consistency, and if too thin add some thirty-two degree syrup, and raw cream if too thick. Freeze by working it until firm and smooth.

Virgin Coffee Cream is prepared with egg-whites instead of yolks, exactly the same way, the proportions being, half a pound of coffee, one quart of milk, sixteen egg-whites instead of the yolks, ten ounces of sugar, a quart of cream and a quarter of a vanilla stick.

← No. 3459 Virgin Cream with Orange Flower Water and No Ices & Ice Creams No. 3461 Ice Cream with Almonds, Fresh or Dried Nuts →

For the Modern Kitchen

A Delmonico's custard base scaled for a restaurant: twenty yolks and nearly half a gallon of dairy. Everything hinges on the infusion — the beans go into the milk whole and roasted, never ground, which is what keeps the cream pale and the flavor delicate.

Whole beans, not groundThe beans appear to go into the milk roasted but whole, which is what keeps the infusion pale: whole beans give up aroma but far less color and bitterness than ground coffee. Grinding them, or steeping much longer than the half hour specified, will darken and coarsen the cream.
Roasting the beans"Not having them too dark" points to a light roast, well short of the oily dark roast sold today. If you are starting from commercially roasted beans, choose the lightest available and skip the pan-roasting; a dark roast will not produce a white cream.
Custard temperature"Thicken without boiling" means holding the custard at 170–180F until it coats a spoon. Above about 185F twenty yolks will curdle very fast, and straining twice, as instructed, will not save a broken custard.
Thirty-two degree syrupA density reading on the Baumé hydrometer, not a temperature: a heavy sugar syrup of about 1.28 specific gravity, roughly 59 per cent sugar by weight, made by boiling sugar and water together and cooling — used here purely to adjust the base if the trial freeze comes out thin.
Vessels"Tinned copper" is period equipment; stainless steel or enameled cast iron does the same job. Unlined copper or aluminum will discolor an egg custard.
The freezerThe "freezer packed in ice" is a pail churn surrounded by ice and rock salt. Ranhofer's advice to freeze a test spoonful first is still sound: a base that is too rich freezes gummy, one too lean freezes icy, and the correction is easier before the whole batch is in the machine.
Yield and scalingAs written the yolk version makes something over two and a half quarts. Quartering it — five yolks, 3 oz sugar, 2 oz coffee beans, and a pint of milk all told, a quarter-pint of it used for the infusion — fits a domestic machine and keeps the ratios.
Raw cream at the endCream added after cooking to loosen a too-thick base is not brought back to heat. Use pasteurized cream, as any modern carton will be, and chill the base thoroughly before churning.
The egg-white version"Virgin Coffee Cream" substitutes sixteen whites for the yolks and adds a quart of cream. Whites set firmer and at a lower temperature than yolks; stir constantly and pull it early, or it will go to fine curds.

A Little History

This is No. 3460 from Charles Ranhofer's The Epicurean (1894), the enormous compendium he assembled after decades as chef at Delmonico's in New York, and it reads like what it is: a kitchen note for cooks with twenty eggs and a block of ice to hand. Café blanc — white coffee — is a nineteenth-century French confectioner's conceit, flavoring a pale custard by steeping whole roasted beans in hot milk so the cream carries the aroma without the color, a trick still used for coffee-scented crème anglaise and bavarois. The companion crème vierge, or virgin cream, made with whites in place of yolks, belonged to the same family of "white" preparations valued for their pallor and lightness. The instruction to test a spoonful in the freezer before committing the batch reflects how much still rested on the cook's own judgment: he judged by feel, and adjusted with syrup or cream.