No. 3462

Ice Cream with Maraschino, Prunelle, Kirsch, Tea or All-Flower

Creme au Marasquin, Prunelle, Kirsch, The ou Mille-Fleurs

Place in a tinned basin twelve ounces of sugar, ten egg-yolks, the peel of one lemon and dilute with three pints of boiling milk; thicken the preparation on the fire while stirring, and as soon as done strain through a sieve into a vessel and stir occasionally till cold; freeze the same as explained in No. 3427; transfer the ice to a small long freezer to finish and when smooth and firm incorporate slowly into it a gill and a half of maraschino or one gill of kirsch or prunelle or else a gill of infused tea or highly concentrated all-flower, either of the two last named requiring the addition of a little rum. Both liqueurs and infusions should be mixed in the ice cream slowly.

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For the Modern Kitchen

This is a single crème anglaise base with five alternative flavourings, all added after churning. The base is straightforward; the flavouring step is where it can go wrong.

Add the alcohol last, and slowlyAlcohol depresses the freezing point, so stirring it in before the mixture has set will leave you with a slush that never firms. Ranhofer's instruction to finish the ice first and then incorporate the liqueur "slowly" is the hinge of the recipe.
A gillA gill is half a cup, 4 fl oz. So a gill and a half of maraschino is 6 fl oz, and a gill of kirsch or prunelle is 4 fl oz — a substantial dose for roughly two quarts of ice cream, and the reason it will stay soft in the freezer.
Quantities in modern termsTwelve ounces of sugar is about 1 3/4 cups; three pints of milk is 6 cups. Ten yolks in that volume gives a rich but pourable custard. Expect a yield of about 2 quarts, serving 10 to 12.
"Thicken on the fire"This means cooking the custard to about 180F, until it coats a spoon — no further, or the yolks curdle. Straining through a sieve, as directed, catches any threads of set egg along with the lemon peel.
Tinned basinA metal bowl lined with tin (usually copper, sometimes iron), the tin lining being there because bare copper reacts with acid and egg. Any heavy stainless or enamelled pan does the same job; avoid bare aluminium with the lemon peel.
The flavouringsMaraschino here is the dry cherry liqueur made from marasca cherries and their kernels, not the sweet red syrup from a jar of cocktail cherries. Prunelle is a sloe or wild-plum liqueur; kirsch is clear cherry brandy. "Mille-fleurs" or all-flower was a perfumed liqueur built on a blend of flower aromatics, largely gone from shops — an orange-flower or elderflower liqueur is the nearest thing in spirit.
Tea and all-flower versionsThese are infusions rather than spirits, and Ranhofer directs that both require the addition of a little rum, which will also supply some of the alcohol the liqueur versions bring. Make the tea infusion very strong and cool it completely, or you will melt the finished ice.
FreezingNo. 3427 is the cross-reference for Ranhofer's freezing method, worked with ice and salt. A domestic ice cream machine replaces the whole operation; chill the custard thoroughly first, churn, then fold in the liqueur and ripen in the freezer for an hour or two.

A Little History

The Epicurean (1894) was Charles Ranhofer's summary of some thirty years as chef at Delmonico's in New York, and its ices section runs to hundreds of numbered variations built on a handful of bases — proof of how central frozen desserts were to the late-nineteenth-century restaurant dinner, where an ice arrived as a matter of course. Building five flavours on one custard is the working logic of a large kitchen: make the anglaise in quantity, freeze it, then flavour each small freezer to order. Maraschino, the most fashionable of the five, is generally traced to Zara in Dalmatia, where it was distilled from marasca cherries with their crushed stones, giving the faintly bitter almond note that made it a standard of American and European confectionery. Prunelle and kirsch belonged to the same family of cordials on a well-stocked sideboard, while "mille-fleurs" — literally thousand-flower — was one of the perfumed liqueurs that fell out of fashion in the twentieth century and are now hard to find under that name.