Ices and Ice Cream

Prepare ice cream for dinner or tea the evening before or early in the morning.

Take two quarts milk and put on three pints to boil.

Beat eight eggs, yolks and whites separately.

Mix the yolks with the remaining pint of milk.

Stir the yolk mixture slowly into the boiling milk.

Boil two minutes.

Remove from the stove and immediately add one and a half pounds sugar, letting it dissolve.

Strain the custard while hot through a crash towel.

Cool the custard.

Add one quart rich cream and two tablespoons vanilla (or season to taste, remembering that the flavoring and sweetness are much diminished by freezing).

Set the custard and the unbeaten whites in a cool place until needed.

About three hours before serving, begin preparations for freezing.

Put the ice in a coarse coffee sack and pound with an ax or mallet until the lumps are no larger than a small hickory nut.

Set the freezer properly in the tub with the beater in and the cover secure.

Place a layer of ice about three inches thick around the freezer, then a layer of coarse salt (rock salt is best), then ice again, then salt, repeating until packed full, with a layer of ice last.

Use about three-fourths ice and one-fourth salt.

Pack very solid, pounding with a broom handle or stick.

Remove the cover and pour into the freezer the custard, to which the well-whipped whites have just been added.

Replace the cover and begin turning the freezer.

After ten minutes, pack the ice down again, drain off most of the water, add more ice and turn again.

Repeat this operation several times until the cream is well frozen and the beater can no longer turn.

Brush the ice and salt from the cover, remove the cover and take out the beater.

Scrape the cream down from the sides of the freezer and beat well several minutes with a wooden paddle.

Replace the cover, fill the hole with a cork, and pour off all the water.

Pack again with ice, using salt at the bottom but none at the top of the tub.

Heap the ice on the cover, spread over it a piece of carpet or a thick woolen blanket, and set away in a cool place until needed.

For moulds, fill them when you remove the beater, packing the cream in very tightly, and place in ice and salt for two hours.

On removing the cream from the moulds, dip the moulds for an instant in warm water.

For coffee ice cream, thicken with arrow root.

For almond flavoring, pound the kernels to a paste with rose water, using arrow root for thickening.

Grate cocoanut and add to the cream and sugar just before freezing.

Do not heat the milk for pineapple, strawberry or raspberry creams.

For berry flavors, let whole berries stand well sprinkled with sugar, mash, strain the juice, add sugar to it and stir into the cream.

For a quart of cream, allow a quart of fruit and a pound of sugar.

For water ices, mix fruit juices with water, sweeten, and freeze as cream.

Freeze ice cream in a warm place, being careful that no salt or water gets into the freezer.

If cream begins to melt while serving, beat up well from the bottom with a long wooden paddle.

Remove the freezer lid carefully and beat the custard with a long wooden ladle or flat stick steadily for five or six minutes.

Replace the lid, pack the ice and salt over it, covering it with about two inches of the mixture.

Spread several folds of blanket or carpet above all and leave untouched for an hour.

Remove the ice from above the freezer lid, wipe off carefully and open the freezer.

Displace the frozen cream lining the sides with a ladle or long knife, working every part loose.

Beat the custard up again firmly and vigorously until it is a smooth, half-congealed paste.

Put on the cover again, pack in more ice and salt, turn off the brine, cover the freezer entirely with ice and spread the carpet over all.

After two or three hours, turn off the brine and add fresh ice and salt, but do not open the freezer for two hours more.

Take the freezer from the ice, open it, wrap a towel wet in hot water about the lower part, and turn out a solid column of ice cream.