No. 3466

Ice Cream Without Cooking

Glaces sans Cuisson

Vanilla.—Mix well together one quart of good cream, half a pound of sugar and half a stick of vanilla infused in a little milk; when the sugar has melted pass the whole through a fine silver wired sieve, and freeze either by machine or in a freezer, turning and detaching the cream with a spatula as fast as it adheres to the sides; after it has solidified finish by working with the spatula, turning the freezer by a rotary movement with this spatula. Instead of vanilla infusion extract of vanilla may be used.

Chocolate.—Boil a quart and a half of cream and with it dissolve half a pound of chocolate melted in a slack oven; add three pounds of sugar, mix well and stir in three quarts of raw cream and a little vanilla extract; strain through a fine sieve and freeze.

Orange Flower Water.—Boil one quart of milk with a quarter of a pound of sugar; dissolve two tablespoonfuls of corn starch, and stir it into the boiling milk, beating it with a whip; color to a fine green, strain through a sieve, and allow to cool. Beat one quart of cream, add six ounces of sugar and a little orange flower water; freeze and incorporate it into the above. Use this cream either for molding or dressing with a spoon.

Lemon.—One quart of cream which has had the peel of a lemon infused therein for one hour; add half a pound of sugar, strain and freeze the same as vanilla.

Coffee.—Prepare one pint of coffee, composed of four ounces of cold Mocha mixed with a pint of cream and twelve ounces of sugar; strain through a fine sieve and freeze.

Light Chocolate.—Have two ounces of chocolate melted in a pint of milk; pass through a sieve, and cool off. Mix one quart of firm whipped cream and three-quarters of a pound of sugar; freeze and add the chocolate very slowly.

← No. 3465 Ice Cream with Roasted or Boiled Chestnuts Ices & Ice Creams No. 3467 Fiori Di Latte a la Bellini →

For the Modern Kitchen

Six uncooked ice creams in the Philadelphia style — cream, sugar, flavouring, no custard base. The quantities are Delmonico's kitchen quantities, and the chocolate in particular needs scaling down before it will fit any domestic machine.

The hinge: sugar must be fully dissolvedThere is no cooking to help here, so the sugar has to go into solution in cold cream before freezing. Stir until you cannot feel grit between your fingers, then strain; undissolved sugar gives a sandy texture that churning will not fix.
Scale the batchesVanilla, as written, is about 1 quart of cream with a scant 1¼ cups sugar and yields roughly 1.5 quarts frozen — a full load for a 2-quart domestic machine. The chocolate calls for 4.5 quarts of cream and 3 lb of sugar; quarter it. It is sweeter than the vanilla or lemon and will freeze soft, though the coffee is sweeter still.
Weights and measuresHalf a pound of sugar is about 1 cup plus 2 tablespoons; three-quarters of a pound about 1.7 cups. A pint here is 16 fl oz. "Half a stick of vanilla" is half a bean, split and scraped, or about 1.5 teaspoons of extract.
A slack ovenFor melting the chocolate, that means roughly 250-275F — the gentlest heat in the range, though the term was never a precise one. A bowl over barely simmering water is the modern equivalent and gives more control; chocolate seizes if any water reaches it, and stiffens or scorches if overheated.
"Cold Mocha" for the coffee iceFour ounces of Mocha coffee infused cold and strained, apparently a cold-steeped concentrate rather than brewed coffee. The ratio is very strong; steep 8-12 hours and taste before committing the whole pint to the pint of cream.
The orange flower water ice is a two-part buildA cornstarch-thickened milk base is cooled, and the separately frozen sweet cream is then worked into it. Note that the green colouring is decorative period practice, unconnected to the flavour; it may be left out. Orange flower water is potent — start with a teaspoon per quart.
Silver wired sieve, and the freezerSilver is non-reactive and will not taint dairy; any fine nylon or stainless sieve does the job. The "freezer" is a pot or pail set in ice and rock salt, and the spatula work described — scraping the frozen film off the walls and back into the middle — is what a modern machine's dasher does automatically.
Lemon infusionPeel only, no pith, one hour in cold cream. Do not add lemon juice: acid will curdle uncooked cream. This is a lemon-scented cream, not a lemon ice.
Serving and storageWith no eggs or stabiliser these freeze hard and hold poorly. Serve within a few hours of churning, and let them sit 10 minutes at room temperature before scooping.

A Little History

The Epicurean (1894) is Charles Ranhofer's record of thirty-odd years as chef at Delmonico's in New York, and its ices section runs to well over a hundred numbered formulas. Glaces sans cuisson — ices without cooking — are the shortcut branch of the family: no egg yolks, no custard cooked and cooled, just cream, sugar and flavour taken straight to the freezer. In American usage this became known as Philadelphia-style ice cream, as against the richer French custard base, and it depends entirely on the quality of the cream, which is why Ranhofer specifies "good cream" and nothing else. The scale of these recipes — quarts of raw cream, pounds of sugar at a time — is a reminder that they were written for a brigade working ice-and-salt freezers by hand for a dining room, not for a household. Commercial ice harvesting made that kind of volume possible; mechanical refrigeration was only beginning to reach large kitchens when the book appeared.