Ice Cream?

[Hank Trent]

Re: Ice Cream?

Just ran across this while looking for something else.

But the ice-creams are the most universal luxury. They are served in public gardens, in saloons that hold a thousand people, at the large confectioners, and on the steamboats, at the uniform price of sixpence, and generally of excellent quality and flavour. I wish I were "posted" in ice-cream statistics enough to give an idea of the daily consumption of New York alone; but I have no doubt that it exceeds that of all Europe.

From Forty Years of American Life, Thomas Low Nichols, 1864.

Hank Trent
hanktrent@voyager.net

[historian101]

Re: Ice Cream?

If I remember correctly, the ice cream cone was introduced during the Worlds Fair in Chicago (I cant remember what year). There were two cookie makers that were both claiming they were the first.

[Emmanuel Dabney]

Elizabeth Welsh Eppes' Ice cream receipt

In the collection of the Virginia Historical Society: Mss1Ep734d Section 73 Cookbook of Elizabeth Welsh (Horner) Eppes:

"Ice cream

Boil one vanilla bean in ½ pt of milk mix with it 2 tablespoonsfull arrowroot, adding cold milk enough to make a thin paste & beat it well then stir in 1 pt. milk, 1 pt. cream, 1 lb sugar strain it & freeze."

It is in her handwriting though the entire cookbook is undated, I have no reason to suspect at the end of her life she quickly began writing these things down, nor do I think the cookbook is totally post-Civil War. Nevertheless, those are just my opinions, she did live during this period and it is possible this could be an antebellum recipe.

[Hank Trent]

Re: Elizabeth Welsh Eppes' Ice cream receipt

"Ice cream

Boil one vanilla bean in ½ pt of milk mix with it 2 tablespoonsfull arrowroot, adding cold milk enough to make a thin paste & beat it well then stir in 1 pt. milk, 1 pt. cream, 1 lb sugar strain it & freeze."

(snip) it is possible this could be an antebellum recipe.

Sounds like it to me. One similar example from The Improved Housewife by A.L. Webster, 1851:

In 2 quarts boiling milk stir 3 spoons arrow-root rubbed smoothly in cold milk; and 12 spoons sugar, flavoring to taste. When cool, add half pint or pint cream. Can be frozen in tin pail, very quickly, if shaken thoroughly and oftne.

Hank Trent
hanktrent@voyager.net

[MissElizabethBrandt]

Re: Ice Cream?

We made ice cream today, covered with failed jam that came out more like a topping - very easy to make.

I'm not sure how valid this account is, but when I was picking strawberries to make jam and mentioned my plan of making 1960s jam, an elderly woman in the row next to me was recounting her mother's account of placing strawberry jam on their ice cream, and also gave me her mother's jam recipe which was very close to the recipe I had gotten.

[calico_outlaw]

Re: Ice Cream?

Artifical Ice was mentioned earlier in the thread, however all the refrences that I have come across pertain to it being made for recreational activities. Does anyone have mention any information for its use in food, say ice cream for example?