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Chocolate Ice Cream
Follow the recipe for French Ice Cream, adding to the milk before scalding, three ounces of grated, sweetened chocolate.
This is a variation rather than a standalone recipe: everything hinges on the French Ice Cream it points back to, which means an egg-custard base rather than the plain cream-and-sugar Philadelphia style. A few notes on the chocolate and the custard.
- The hinge: infuse, don't dumpThe chocolate goes into the milk before scalding so it melts and disperses while the liquid is still thin. Added later, to a thickened custard, grated chocolate is much more likely to stay as gritty specks.
- "Sweetened chocolate"The specification distinguishes it from the unsweetened baking block also sold at the time: this is a chocolate already sugared. A modern semisweet bar is the nearest available substitute, though period sweet chocolate was typically lower in cacao; three ounces of unsweetened chocolate would taste harsher against the custard's sugar.
- Scalding temperatureScald means about 180F, when the surface shivers and a ring of bubbles forms at the edge. A full boil scorches milk sugars and, with chocolate in suspension, catches on the pan bottom quickly.
- Cooking the custardOnce the eggs go in, hold the custard to 170-180F, stirring constantly, until it coats the back of a spoon. Much above 185F it risks curdling. Chocolate darkens the mixture enough that you cannot judge thickening by eye, so use a thermometer or the spoon test.
- Strain and chillPass the finished custard through a fine sieve to catch any egg threads and undissolved chocolate, then chill it thoroughly, ideally overnight. A warm base churns to a coarser, icier texture.
- FreezingThe original assumes a hand-cranked bucket freezer packed with ice and rock salt; ratios given in the sources vary, commonly somewhere between three and eight parts ice to one of salt. Any modern churn works; expect roughly 20-30 minutes to soft-serve consistency, then a few hours in the freezer to firm.
- YieldNot stated, and it depends entirely on the base recipe it refers back to.
"French" ice cream, in American cookbooks from the late nineteenth century onward, meant a base built on egg yolks cooked into a custard, as against "Philadelphia" ice cream, which was simply sweetened cream flavored and frozen. The distinction mattered enough that books listed both, and chocolate versions were made on either base. The instruction to use grated chocolate reflects how it was sold: in hard cakes or blocks meant to be shaved down, rather than the chips and easily chopped thin bars of later manufacture.