A bowl, cup or cone of good ice cream in the summertime is a pleasure worth savouring whenever it’s available. Where better to turn for guidance (tried and tested!) on the subject than The Women’s Institute Book of Home Cooking? Its chapter on Ice-creams, Sorbets and Party Desserts urges readers that the matter of making your own ice cream is much simpler than imagined...
Before the advent of industrial supermarket freezers and literal stacks of tubs to choose from, making ice cream and variations of it had much popularity. If you could master a simple vanilla base, you could then progress to any number of variations, encompassing everything from peaches and summer berries to chocolate sauces or fruit purées. As to the exotic and adventurous? The Women’s Institute suggests such culinary delights as Peach Melba and Bread Ice-cream: all jaunty little kitchen experiments to withstand the changes of tastes and seasons.
Photo by Leighann Blackwood on Unsplash
To make your own ice cream is to reward patience with something most satisfying. Should you wish to begin, the classic vanilla recipe reproduced below makes a very good place to start. Once you’ve broken ground by making it once, there is every excuse to contemplate the addition of fresh raspberries, blackberries from the hedgerow, honey, mint, or even a splash of elderflower cordial while the season is still with us:
Classic Vanilla Ice Cream
Serves 6–8
Ingredients: 175g (6oz) caster sugar; 150ml (¼ pint) water; 5 egg yolks; 275ml (½ pint) whipping cream
- Dissolve the sugar in the water over a gentle heat, ensuring every grain has dissolved completely. Bring to the boil and boil rapidly for 5 minutes. Leave to cool slightly.
- Meanwhile, beat the egg yolks in a heatproof bowl. Gradually pour the warm sugar syrup onto the yolks in a thin, steady stream, beating continuously.
- Place the bowl over a saucepan of hot (not boiling) water and whisk until the mixture has thickened. Remove from the heat and leave to cool completely.
- Whip the cream until stiff, then gently fold it into the cooled egg mixture.
- Pour into a freezer-proof container, cover, and freeze. When the mixture is beginning to set, transfer it to a bowl and beat well. This breaks down the tiny ice crystals, producing a smoother texture.
- Return to the freezer until completely firm.
N.b. Home-made ice cream is usually harder than bought ice cream, so bring it out of the freezer around 15 minutes before serving.
Looking back to earlier cooks, the business of ice cream making, and the predicament of how to keep it frozen through the summer, required considerable forethought. I gave the historical science of it all some consideration myself while reading Anthony Capella’s excellent fictional novel, The Empress of Ice Cream, which was set in 1670 and followed Carlo Demirco, an Italian ice cream maker for Louis XIV. My appreciation for early makers of this confection grew with each chapter and more of the history which inspired the story can be found through English Heritage who note how ice was collected during the winter and then kept in purpose-built ice houses at country houses, the relatives of refrigerators, where it could be serviceable for months thereafter. I visited Kenwood House with the Oxfordshire Federation of Women’s Institutes in July where I learnt that Kenwood stored their ice beneath the dairy, with other houses claiming even more substantial ice houses, all of which would have been maintained on site.
Photo by Jack Calverley on Unsplash
The ice that came from such houses wasn’t added to the other necessary ingredients, rather, it was packed around containers to provide the cold required to freeze or chill the mixture itself. A traditional sorbetière, often a lidded pewter vessel, could be placed into a bucket of ice and salt and turned by hand. Frozen desserts were therefore made possible long before household refrigeration became commonplace.
You can’t really tell the story of ice cream without bringing in Agnes Marshall, a Victorian cookery writer and entrepreneur who made a name for herself through recipes, equipment and teaching in the nineteenth century. She published The Book of Ices and her approach perfectly demonstrates just the imaginative possibilities of ice cream back in the day. For instance, English Heritage’s reconstruction of Victorian recipes includes cucumber ice cream, while historic collections preserve moulds in the shapes of fruit and other elaborate forms.
Photo by Krisztina Papp on Unsplash
Marshall was an inventor as well as a writer. Her patented ice cream maker was designed to speed up the freezing process, using a combination of ice, salt and a mechanical paddle. The development of equipment such as this marked an important step in transforming ice cream from an elaborate luxury into something which could be produced rather more readily.
By the nineteenth century, ice cream was becoming increasingly visible beyond wealthy households. Confectioners sold ices, and ice cream sellers became a familiar sight on Britain’s streets. The British Library’s collections include photographs and printed material documenting Italian ice-cream sellers in London, while by the Victorian period the ice cream parlour, cart and shop had become part of the urban summer landscape.
With all of this in mind, making your own ice cream at home can be a way to appreciate the history behind it, and pay humble homage to this summertime dessert.
This article first appeared in an expanded form of Household Notes in In Bookish Company, my free fortnightly circular inspired by the parish magazines, Women’s Institute newsletters and community bulletins of years gone by. If you enjoy thoughtful writing on books, heritage, home, seasonal living and the quieter pleasures of everyday life, you are warmly invited to join us. Each issue is available to read free of charge here on my website and on my Substack, where you can also subscribe to receive future editions directly in your inbox.
With all the joy of ice cream,
Chloe (Noted by Chloe)
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