A Golden Oldie from Food History News

A great chocolate ice cream recipe I found in Mrs. Henderson's
Practical Cooking and Dinner Giving. Move over Ben and Jerry.

Chocolate Ice Cream.

CHOCOLATE ICE CREAM is made the same way as the vanilla ice-cream, adding a flavoring of chocolate and a little vanilla powder. For instance, to make a quart and a half of cream: Make the boiled custard with the yolks of six egg, half a pound of sugar, one pint of boiled milk, and a tea-spoonful (not heaping) of vanilla powder. Pound smooth four ounces of chocolate; add a little sugar and one or two tablespoonfuls of hot water. Stir it over the fire until it is perfectly smooth. Add this and a tablespoonful of thin dissolved gelatin to the hot custard. When about to set in the freezer, add one pint of cream, whipped.

[Mary F. Henderson, Practical Cooking and Dinner Giving, 1882, page 308.]

Oh, yum. This is the Fourth of July standard, or when young company comes, or for family birthdays. We use a hand-cranked ice cream freezer we found at a yard sale. It takes about twenty minutes of steady cranking, which earns us the right to actually eat some. Remember, electric machines may crank patiently as long as you want them to, but they will have lousy judgement about how fast to go and when to stop. Better do it yourself for a truly premium product.

Mrs. Henderson's is a lovely cookbook. Full of illustrations, it is, besides, proof that not everybody was a temperance adherent in the 1880s. She advises on the best sorts of wines to buy, and gives recipes for a few very nice alcoholic punches. Her menus are lots of fun, and one of these days I am going to replicate one, just for the heck of it. It hasn't been reprinted but a search service might find one for you: published in New York, by Harper & Bros., it first appeared in 1876.

Here's an interpretation of the recipe above to make it a little easier for you to do:

2 cups milk
4 ounces unsweetened chocolate (2 squares)
1 cup sugar
6 egg yolks
2 teaspoons vanilla extract
1 teaspoon gelatin dissolved in 2 tablespoons hot water
2 cups cream

Scald the milk in a double boiler or heavy saucepan, adding the chocolate when it is hot, and stirring it until the chocolate melts. Remove from the heat. Add sugar and stir till it dissolves in the milk. Take it off the heat.. In a separate bowl, beat the egg yolks, then drizzle in some of the hot milk, say half a cup or so, stirring to blend. Gradually add the yolk mixture back into the rest of the hot milk. Put it back over the heat. Add the dissolved gelatin (you could actually leave it out, I have, and nothing much happens.) Cook all together till the custard has thickened considerably and passes the custard test: the custard coats a spoon and when you run your finger across the back, will not seep in. Add the vanilla. Chill it. It makes better ice cream, actually, if you make it the day before you intend to freeze it.

When you are ready to freeze it, whip the cream until it holds a soft peak, and fold it into the chilled custard. Pour into the freezer and churn. A long time ago, I heard that the best speed is slow and steady. Eat immediately or pack into a container to freeze harder to eat later. Let the littlest kid lick the dasher.