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Neapolitan Ice Cream
Prepare a quart vanilla ice cream. Have a well-cleaned quart brick mould with the bottom lined with a sheet of white paper. Place one-third the prepared vanilla into the mould and keep it buried in ice. Have a clean, empty pint tin can on ice, then drop another third of the vanilla into the can. Mash and strain through a sieve six tablespoons preserved strawberries and drop the liquor into the freezer with the remaining third of the vanilla, adding two drops strawberry colouring. Thoroughly mix with a wooden spoon and let stand in the freezer. Pour one teaspoon pistache essence into the tin can containing one part of the vanilla. Mix briskly with a wooden spoon. Remove and spread the strawberry ice cream from the freezer over the vanilla in the brick, then the pistache over the strawberry cream. Arrange a piece of white paper on top of the pistache. Close the mould and bury it in the tub in which the vanilla was first prepared; then freeze for fully one hour. Remove the brick, dip the tin in lukewarm water for a few seconds, wipe well; unmould on a cold dish with a folded napkin and serve. (As soon as you begin to prepare the Neapolitan brick, it should be done as rapidly as possible so as to avoid melting.)
This is an assembly recipe rather than a custard recipe: it assumes you already have a quart of finished vanilla ice cream at soft-frozen stage and a hand-cranked freezer packed with ice and salt. The whole method turns on speed and on keeping every vessel cold.
- The hinge: work cold and fastEvery step happens with the ice cream at soft-serve consistency, never melted and never hard. Chill the mould, the tin can, the spoons and the serving dish beforehand, and refreeze any layer that starts to slump before adding the next.
- "Freezer" means the ice-and-salt tubThe freezer here is the metal canister sitting in a wooden tub of cracked ice and rock salt; the recipe's own instruction to bury the mould in "the tub in which the vanilla was first prepared" makes that plain. A modern equivalent is an ice cream machine's bowl for the mixing and the household freezer for the hour of setting, though timings in a home freezer will differ from brine-packed ice, so check the brick rather than trusting the hour.
- QuantitiesA quart brick mould holds about a litre; a standard loaf pan lined with parchment works, since the paper sheets in the original are there purely for clean release. Each layer is roughly 1 1/3 cups of ice cream. Serves eight to ten in slices.
- Preserved strawberriesBerries put up in syrup, home-made or bought. Six tablespoons mashed and strained gives a sweet, thin liquor; the recipe uses only the liquor, so the fruit solids are left out and the layer stays smooth. Good strawberry jam thinned slightly and sieved is the closest substitute; expect a softer set from the extra sugar.
- Pistache essencePistachio extract, still sold, though modern versions are often almond-based and artificially coloured. A teaspoon here flavours only a third of the quart, which is assertive by modern taste; start with half. Neapolitan bricks were commonly tinted green in this layer; this recipe adds colouring only to the strawberry.
- Strawberry colouringTwo drops of a period fruit colouring. Ordinary red food colouring does the job, and the strawberry liquor alone gives a respectable pink if you would rather leave it out.
- Unmoulding"Dip the tin in lukewarm water for a few seconds" means seconds — long enough to release, not to glaze the outside. Wipe dry, invert onto the cold dish, then return the whole thing to the freezer for ten minutes before slicing if it has softened.
The name points to Naples, and the layered brick is generally traced to Italian ice-makers and confectioners who spread through European and American cities in the nineteenth century. What defines the dish is the mould rather than the flavours: a rectangular pewter or tin brick let the finished cream be turned out and cut in slices, so a single serving showed all three colours at once, which is why the layers had to be visually distinct as much as distinct in taste. Vanilla, strawberry and pistachio was one standard trio; chocolate later displaced pistachio in the American version. The careful business of paper liners and lukewarm dips shows how much of the appeal was presentation — at a time when any frozen dessert still meant a tub of ice, a sack of rock salt and someone cranking.