Search Results for 'ice cream'

The History Dish: Pumpernickel Ice Cream and Cinnamon Lemon Bay Leaf Ice Cream

icecream1Left: pumpernickel. Right: Cinnamon/bay leaf/lemon.

Here in New York City it has been HOT. But here’s my solution: I made two fascinating flavors of historic ice cream. Brown Bread ice cream, infused with actual pumpernickel bread, and a cinnamon-bay leaf-lemon ice cream made with fresh bay leaves.

The History

The spark of inspiration to make both these recipes came from my favorite book on ice cream history, Of Sugar and Snow: A History of Ice Cream Making.  The author, Jeri Quinzio, explained the rye bread ice cream appeared in the first book completely dedicated to ice cream making, written by a “Monsieur Emy” in France in 1768.  Rye bread crumbs are infused in the cream, but are strained out before freezing. A popular 19th century flavor, later recipes added toasted rye bread crumbs just before freezing for a bit of crunch, but Emy’s was a smooth ice cream.

IMG_1396

My bay leaf plant on my fire escape.

The second recipe I tried was called “Cinnamon Ice Cream (Creme de Cannelle),” from Agnes Marshall’s Book of Ices, published in 1885. Marshal was an ice cream genius, and I’ve written about her before. She was the first person to suggest using liquid nitrogen to freeze ice cream. Her recipes are genius, to the point of madness–like her savory Neapolitan made with tomatoes, artichokes, and peas.

Her cinnamon ice cream featured a stick of ceylon cinnamon, the zest of half a lemon, and a bay leaf. I had purchased a fresh bay leaf plant for just this recipe. A fresh bay leaf is dramatically different from dried: vegetal and aromatic, I wanted its special flavor for my crazy ice cream.

The Recipe

icecream2It’s pumpernickely!

For both of these recipes, I started with a basic custard ice cream:

Custard Ice Cream

  • 2 cups heavy whipping cream
  • 1 cup whole milk
  • 1 vanilla bean (or, other flavoring of your choice)
  • 6 large egg yolks
  • 3/4 cup sugar
  • 1/4 teaspoon coarse salt
  • Additional mix-ins

Add split and scraped vanilla bean to cream and milk in a saucepan. Bring to a boil.  In the meantime, in a glass bowl whisk together egg yolks, sugar and salt until blended. After cream mixture comes to a boil, pour slowly on the egg mixture, whisking constantly. Return to saucepan and cook over low heat, stirring constantly with a wooden spoon, until custard thickens slightly and evenly coats back of spoon (it should hold a line drawn by your finger).  Pour custard through a fine-mesh sieve into a bowl set over ice, or place in refrigerator, until chilled–overnight is preferable. Churn in an ice-cream maker according to manufacturer’s instructions, adding mix-ins like nuts or fruits in the last few minutes of freezing. Transfer ice cream to a resealable plastic container and freeze until firm, about 2 hours.

For Pumpernickel Ice Cream: Toast 2 cups of pumpernickel bread until deep brown on the edges. Add to milk and cream and bring to a boil. Remove from heat, and allow to infuse for two minutes. Proceed as recipe directs.

For Cinnamon Ice Cream: To milk and cream, add “a finger-length” of Ceylon cinnamn (about 4 inches), 1 bay leaf, and the peel of half a lemon. Cut the peel off the lemon with a pairing knife, taking care to avoid the white pith. Bring milk, cream, and spice to a boil; remove from heat and allow to infuse 2 minutes. Proceed with recipes as directed.

I also made this fun little video of all the steps to make these ice creams; enjoy and I hope it’s helpful!

The Results

icecream3Cinnamon ice cream perfection.

The pumpernickel ice cream was genuinely repulsive. It has a mucus-like texture I noticed even before I froze it, some strange gooey quality infused from the bread. The flavor of the pumpernickel  gave the ice cream an assertive savory-sweet taste, as though I had made ice cream from an entire McDonald’s hamburger, ketchup, pickles and all.

But the cinnamon ice cream–oh! Interestingly, cinnamon is not the flavor I would have assigned to it. The flavor, delicate and complex, would be unidentifiable if you weren’t informed. There’s a greeness from the bay leaf, a gentle citus from the lemon zest, and a soft floral quality from the ceylon cinnamon. The combination goes perfectly with the texture of the custard. It’s a real winner, and the ice cream you should make to cool you down in the dog days of summer.

Podcast: Gastropod and Ice Cream!

I’m featured in the latest Gastropod podcast, and it’s all about ICE CREAM!

It’s one of the most complex food products you’ll ever consume: a thermodynamic miracle that contains all three states of matter—solid, liquid, and gas—at the same time. And yet no birthday party, beach trip, or Fourth of July celebration is complete without a scoop or two.

Contrary to popular myth, ice cream was not brought to Italy from China by Marco Polo, and then introduced to France by Catherine de Medici. In fact, it is a delicious love-child, born of the union between a culinary tradition of custards and burnt creams in medieval Northern Europe, and the fruity, floral, sherbets (sharbat in Persian) that were typically served over ice as a refreshing drink in the Middle East.

This episode of Gastropod serves up a big bowl of delicious ice cream, topped with the hot fudge sauce of history and a sprinkling of science. Grab your spoons and join us as we bust ice-cream origin myths, dig into the science behind brain freeze, and track down a chunk of pricey whale poo in order to recreate the earliest ice cream recipe written in English

Listen here to learn more!

History Dish: Maple Ice Cream and Maple Custard Pie

IMG_8768An excellent maple ice cream.

My Mom makes her own maple syrup. She taps trees on her five acre property in Ohio, boils down the sap on her kitchen stove, and makes the richest, most buttery maple syrup I have ever tasted.

It was a good sugaring season this year: a stretch of weeks with temperatures above freezing during the day, below freezing at night. Mom made over three gallons of syrup, which meant the last time I visited, I was sent back to New York City with this:

IMG_8701Homemade maple syrup, light and dark, and maple sugar.

I thought it might be a good time to test out some historic maple syrup recipes.

The History

Jefferson wrote to a friend in 1790 and said of maple syrup: “What a blessing to substitute a sugar which requires only the labour of children, for that which it is said renders the slavery of the blacks necessary.” Maple sugar was considered an ideal alternative to white sugar from sugar cane, and was championed by abolitionists throughout the 19th century. Unfortunately, the general population thought maple’s particular taste a negative and preferred the neutral flavor of white sugar. Maple tasted of poverty and necessity, while white sugar symbolized wealth and aspiration.

Today, we seek out the unique flavor of true maple sugar. Well, at least I do. But I always imagined myself as a Shaker or a Quaker, or in one of those wild vegetarian communes in the 19th century, anyway.

The Recipes

I had two recipes I wanted to try out, both came from a stack of handwritten papers and recipe booklets dating to the 19teens. Mark (who also helps my mom harvest the maple sap) gave them to me. The came from a storage unit, or an estate sale, or something–he has a thriving Ebay business and always finds me interesting ephemera.

IMG_9032Maple Parfait Recipe

Maple Parfait, a handwritten recipe, is actually a maple ice cream: maple custard is folded into whipped cream, which is a great way to make ice cream if your don’t have an ice cream maker at home.

Maple Parfait – Jessie

“4 eggs; 1 cup hot maple syrup; 1 pint thick whipped cream. Beat eggs slightly & pour on slowly the hot maple syrup; cook until the mixture; cool & add cream beaten until stiff. Mould, pack in salt & ice & let sand 3 hours. Use 4 parts salt to 1 part ice.”

You’ll notice the original recipes left out a few instructions. After some head scratching–and a recent conversation with Jonathan Soma of the Brooklyn Brainery about how to make ice cream without an ice cream maker–I figured them out.

IMG_8711The eggs after the hot maple syrup is added.

4 large eggs, beaten
1 cup maple syrup, brought to a boil
1 pint heavy whipping cream

1. Pour maple syrup in a slow, steady steam over to eggs while whisking constantly. You want to bring the eggs slowly up to temperature–not scramble them!

2. Return to a saucepan and heat over medium-low, stirring constantly, until the mixture thickens to a pudding-like consistency. Allow to cool.

3. Beat cream to stiff peaks, and fold in egg mixture. Pack in small individual molds, or simply a Tupperware, and put in the freezer for at least three hours.

***

IMG_9037 IMG_9034Maple Marshmallow Pie Recipe

Maple Marshmallow Pie comes from a recipe booklet for Bunte Marshmallows, although I decided to leave off the marshmallow topping. I’m increasingly grossed out by marshmallow topped foods.

Maple Pie
1 pie crust (store-bought or homemade)
2 large eggs
1/3 cup Maple Sugar (You can purchase maple sugar, or make your own by putting maple syrup in a sheet pan, and sticking it in the oven at a very low temperature. Keep an ete on it as the water evaporates and the sugar crystalizes. This process can take and hour or more.)
1 teaspoon flour
2 cups whole milk

1. Preheat over to 450 degrees. Line your pie tin or plate with crust. Make the edges look fancy!

2. Beat two eggs with a fork until light, then add maple sugar. Allow to soak two minutes, then beat until sugar has completely dissolved. Add flour and beat; gradually add milk while stirring constantly. Fill pie crust.

3. Bake for 15 minutes, then turn down oven to 350 degrees and bake 45 minutes more, until a knife inserted in the center comes out clean, but the filling still has a little jiggle.

The Results

IMG_8728Maple custard pie

The maple ice cream is killer and I highly recommend it. It’s a fun summer treat that takes very little work and delivers a strong maple flavor. Try it with a dark syrup (Grade B) which tastes the most mapley of all the syrups.

The pie was a bit of a disappointment; the texture was pleasant, smooth and custardy, but the maple flavor didn’t come through. It tasted different from a vanilla custard pie, but was not easily identifiable as maple. Which is strange, because maple sugar should have the most flavor, being as condensed as it can be.

Do you have a favorite maple recipe? Share in the comments. I still have so much maple syrup left!

The History Dish: Ice Cream with Tomato, Artichoke, and Peas

veg_creamValentine Cream of Vegetables, a recipe by Agnes Marshall.

Jell-O Molds. As beautiful as they are horrifying, we often associated these epic jiggly affairs with the kitsch mid-20th century. But today’s recipe is from the 19th century: The Valentine Cream of Vegetables, a  Neapolitan-style frozen ice cream gelatin mold, uses savory vegetable purees to flavor each one of its colorful layers. It’s a “…a nice dish for a second course or luncheon, or as a vegetable entree, or for a ball supper,” according to Fancy Ices, where the original recipe can be found.

The History

fancyices1

Fancy Ices was penned in 1894 by the brilliant Agnes Marshall. I’ve written about her before; she arguable wrote about the first use of ice cream cones, and suggested the use “liquid air” to freeze ice cream table side. Her earlier ice cream book, The Book of Ices, is available online or for purchase as a reproduction, and offers recipes that range from almond (or orgeat) to souffles of curry a la ripon. Fancy Ices goes to the next level, showcasing recipes ranging from a coffee strawberry ice cream to a cucumber sorbet to complicated trompe d’oeil molds. It’s a masterpiece that’s thrilling to flip through. If you live in the New York area, Fancy Ices is available by off-site request at the New York Public Library’s main reading room at Bryan Park. It’s a special experience, unwrapping a book like this pulled from the archives, and physically flipping through pages and pages of recipes ranging from the inspired to the bizarre.

The Recipe

creamofFull recipe here.

I heard of this recipe in Of Sugar and Snow: A History of Ice Cream Making, and excellent book particularly if you’re looking for inspiration in the way of unique historical flavors. In this recipe, each of the layers is flavored with a different vegetable(s), stock and/or alcohols. You can read the lengthy and complicated original recipe here, but here are the basic ingredients by layer:

Green: Cucumbers, peas, white sauce (flour, butter, pepper), green food coloring, gelatin, chicken gravy, whipped cream.

Red: Tomatoes, shallots, red food coloring, stock, sherry, gelatin, whipped cream.

White: Canned artichoke hearts, chicken gravy, gelatin, white sauce, whipped cream.

The vegetables were boiled with gelatin until soft, and then run through a fine mesh strainer until all that remains is a smooth liquid, which is frozen in a rectangular mold a layer at a time.

veg_cream8Boiling the green vegetables.

 

veg_cream5Creating the puree.

The process was immensely labor intensive and I was fortunate enough to have my Mom in town to help me. When I enlisted her aid, she protested and asked why we couldn’t do the lovely strawberry-lemon ice on the proceeding page of Fancy Ices. But let’s be honest: that’s not what you people want to see. You want to schadenfreude of artichoke-chicken ice cream.

The Results

Lacking a proper Neapolitan mold, we used a loaf pan. We allowed our creation to freeze solid and then carefully submerged to pan in warm water and ran a sharp knife along the side to released the Valentine cream. After some vigorous shaking, it came out PERFECT. Compare ours with the illustration in Fancy Ices:

creamofvegIllustration of Valentine Cream of Vegetables from Fancy Ices.
veg_cream4My finished Valentine Cream of Vegetables.

Success. I feel like we recreated something that looks, smells, and tastes just like Mrs. Marshall intended. It is her vision made real.

But how did it taste?

My mom and I cut a slice and decked it out with the horseradish-mustard-mayonnaise Mrs. Marshall recommends. We ate it without complaint. The stocks, chicken gravies, and sherries made it taste like a cold, jellied soup. Not horrific, but not delicious.

This dish felt subtlety out of style, a particularly taste and texture combination that was just slightly unpalatable. Perhaps no one ever really loved the taste and the dish had always been more about status: time consuming and complicated, it required the full attention of two skilled cooks several hours to complete. Only someone wealthy enough to EMPLOY my mother and I would be serving this at their ball.

Although, Mrs. Marshall’s Valentine Cream of Vegetables isn’t so off trend in 2014. This summer, Haagen-Dazs Japan launched two vegetable flavored ice creams, Carrot-Orange and Tomato-Cherry; and new local ice creamy Odd Fellows has offered Edamame, Butternut Squash and Beet-Pistachio flavors.

What do you think? Have you had a vegetable-based ice cream and do you think they could have a place in the world of frozen treats?

 

Masters of Social Gastronomy: The Mysteries of ICE CREAM

We couldn’t wait for summer, so we’re bringing summer to us!

Tuesday, April 29
FREE FREE FREE, 21+ RSVP
Doors at 7:30pm, talks start at 8pm
Littlefield, 622 Degraw Street in Gowanus

Every month, our MSG lectures take on the history and science behind some of your favorite foods. Up this month: ICE CREAM.

Hear the tale of vanilla ice cream, a commonplace flavor with a rare and exotic past. We’ll take a hard look at the science that makes ice cream tick and see if we can harness the DIY spirit to craft up astronaut ice cream in your very own kitchen.

The wide range of curious flavors will be on full display, with 19th-century artichoke-and-tomato ice cream and other adventuresome (and masochistic) creations.

The History Dish: I Made Ambergris Ice Cream!

ambergris

Ice cream made from whale puke.

I’ve done it! Below you’ll find a reprint of some information from my original post, but then read on for the results!

Food historian Ivan Day has discovered what is believed to be the first recipe for ice cream, written in a manuscript by Lady Anne Fanshawe of England. Dating to c. 1665, she flavors her ice cream with mace, orangeflower water, or ambergris.

Ambergris is an “intestinal slurry,” believed to be a ball of muscus-covered, indigestible squid beaks. This mass is ejected into the oceans by sperm whales, much like a cat disgorging a hairball. A ball of ambergris floats in the sea until it washes ashore and is collected. Throughout the 18th century, it was a prized flavoring for sweets and today it is still valued today as a base for perfumes. Its smell and flavor can range from “earthy to musky to sweet.” At the current Whales: Giants of the Deep exhibit at the American Museum of Natural History, you are encourage to sniff a large ball of very valuable whale puke.

I needed to known what ambergris ice cream tasted like.  Ambergris is very, very expensive: it will run you about $25 per gram. There are more affordable, essential oils made from it, but often they are labeled “not for consumption.” I searched far and wide and finally found Dewberry’s Herbal, an Etsy shop stocked with handmade essential oils that even lets you choose which oil base you want. I picked the “True Ambergris (Sperm Whale)” with grapeseed oil, the most neutral of oils!

When I opened the bottle, I would describe the first whiff of scent as “Old Man Body and Breath.” Ambergris is a used in perfumes today not necessarily for its own smell, but because it deepens and intensifies other scents, and makes them last longer. I added 1/2 teaspoon to a quart of homemade custard ice cream base, and let my ice cream maker do its thing.

Once frozen, I tasted it: the first thing I noticed was the unbelievable texture. Custard (egg based) ice cream already have a very rich texture, but this ice cream was the smoothest, creamiest ice cream I have ever tasted.  I attribute it to the extra 1/2 teaspoon of grapeseed oil. Ice cream texture has a lot to do with fat content, and apparently, adding a little extra oil at the end is a technique worth playing around with.

The flavor itself began floral, and finished armpit, with a taste that even now still lingers my tongue.  It wasn’t truly repulsive, but after awhile, it did make my stomach start to turn. But I considered that I might be biased; sometimes, I find, that when I’ve prepared a strong-smelling food, I tend not to like the end result because I can still perceive the original foul smell, even if its barely noticeable. This has happened to me once before, while preparing moose face.

So I took it to a test group. 3/6 people genuinely appreciated its floral and musky qualities; they ate it with pleasure. 2/6 liked it until I explained what ambergris was. 1 said he could understand if someone handed this flavor to him and said it was the next big thing, but didn’t like it himself.

In an era when sweets were packed full of orange flower water and rose water, it makes sense that the complex floral flavors of ambergris would have been appreciated.  However, this is what life was like without vanilla, folks. Support you local vanilla farmer.

Events: Sriracha & Ice Cream

Image by kattebelletje

Sriracha: A History

Thursday, August 29th, 8:30-10PM
@ the Brooklyn Brainery
$17 Sign up here!

A pungent sauce, produced in California by a Korean immigrant of Chinese descent, intended for Thai consumers. A sauce that has somehow crossed over into the American mainstream, popular enough to merit its own potato chip flavor.

That is Rooster Sauce–as American as apple pie.

In the class, we’ll explore the fascinating history of Sriracha and you’ll learn how to make your own version of this spicy sauce. Then, we’ll go beyond Pho and explore the versatility of Sriracha by taste-testing some unexpected flavor combinations.

I’m also teaching Homemade Ice Cream Class at the Brooklyn Brainery on Thursday, August 15th, 8:30-10PM. Sign up here!

 

 

The History Dish: Ambergris Ice Cream

Image from Gourmet.com, from a 2008 article that postulates ambergris might be the next big flavor.

Food historian Ivan Day has discovered what is believed to be the first recipe for ice cream, written in a manuscript by Lady Anne Fanshawe of England. Dating to c. 1665, she flavors her ice cream with mace, orangeflower water, or ambergris.

Ambergris is an “intestinal slurry,” believed to be a ball of muscus-covered, indigestible squid beaks. This mass is ejected into the oceans by sperm whales, much like a cat disgorging a hairball. A ball of ambergris floats in the sea until it washes ashore and is collected. Throughout the 18th century, it was a prized flavoring for sweets and today it is still valued today as a base for perfumes. Its smell and flavor can range from “earthy to musky to sweet.” At the current Whales: Giants of the Deep exhibit at the American Museum of Natural History, you are encourage to sniff a large ball of very valuable whale puke.

I needed to known what ambergris ice cream tasted like.  Ambergris is very, very expensive: it will run you about $25 per gram. There are more affordable, essential oils made from it, but often they are labeled “not for consumption.” I searched far and wide and finally found Dewberry’s Herbal, an Etsy shop stocked with handmade essential oils that even let you choose which oil base you want. I picked the “True Ambergris” with grapeseed oil, the most neutral of oils!

I have been psyched for this experiment for weeks! …And the end of the story is the ambergris got lost in the mail. Or, stolen from the foyer of my apartment building. It is no where to be found–and I’m crushed.

To be continued…when I can work out the insurance claim, or scrape together money to by some more, Ambergris Ice Cream will happen!

The History Dish: Howqua’s Tea Ice Cream

 Coarse leaves of lapsang souchong tea. Photo by Selva.

You may have noticed the trend, in the fancy ice cream freezer at the grocery store, for bright green pints of “Green Tea Ice Cream.” The color, and flavor, comes from matcha, the green tea powder that is traditionally used in Japanese tea ceremonies.  Although the use of  matcha in confections is recent, the idea of tea-flavored ice cream is quite old.

Drinks, like tea, coffee, and “hot” chocolate, were some of the earliest ice cream flavors, first appearing in the 18th century. This recipe for Howqua’s-Tea Ice Cream, from The Ice Book, 1844, particularly captured my imagination.

Who’s this Howqua dude? Wu Ping-Chien, known as Howqua or Ho-Kwa in the West, was a Mandarin trader in the early 19th century. His family business worked heavily with England and the United States and by the time of the Opium War, Howqua was one of the richest men on the planet. Known for the fine quality of his products, his famous name was often appropriated to lend inferior brands of tea an air of luxury.
The name was often given to black tea blends, known to have a “delicious fragrant aroma” or a “peculiar flavor.”  Some brands seem to have gotten their unique taste from orange pekoe tea; while other relied on lapsang souchong. Lapsang souchong is made from course tea leaves plucked far away from the “bud” of the tea plant.  These leaves lack aromatic compounds and therefore flavor. To compensate, the leaves are dried over a smokey pine fire, resulting in a rich, black tea with a dark, smoked flavor.
I thought a smokey black tea might make for an interesting ice cream, so I tried it out. I used my standard custard ice cream recipe (below) and infused the milk and cream with 1/4 cup of loose leaf lapsang souchong tea.
The results? I swear to god it tasted just like bacon. It’s vegetarian bacon ice cream, with a flavor more subtle and complex than squirting liquid smoke into everything (the method often used to create “fake” bacon flavor).  Was it any good?  Debatable.  But it seems like the technique could be expanded upon and taken advantage of.  Give it a whirl and let me know how it goes.
***
Basic Custard Ice Cream
A Frankenstein combination of recipes from Thomas Jefferson, Martha Stewart, and Alton Brown.
  • 2 cups heavy whipping cream

  • 1 cup whole milk

  • 1 vanilla bean (or, other flavoring of your choice)

  • 6 large egg yolks

  • 3/4 cup sugar

  • 1/4 teaspoon coarse salt

  • Additional mix-ins

Add split and scraped vanilla bean to cream and milk in a saucepan. Bring to a boil.  In the meantime, in a glass bowl whisk together egg yolks, sugar and salt until blended. After cream mixture comes to a boil, pour slowly on the egg mixture, whisking constantly. Return to saucepan and cook over low heat, stirring constantly with a wooden spoon, until custard thickens slightly and evenly coats back of spoon (it should hold a line drawn by your finger).  Pour custard through a fine-mesh sieve into a bowl set over ice, or place in refrigerator, until chilled–overnight is preferable. Churn in an ice-cream maker according to manufacturer’s instructions, adding mix-ins like nuts or fruits in the last few minutes of freezing. Transfer ice cream to a resealable plastic container and freeze until firm, about 2 hours.

***
I learned about Howqua’s Ice Cream from Ivan Day’s Ice Cream: A History (Shire Library), a slim book packed with information and images about ice cream history.

Etsy Kitchen Histories: Parmesan Ice Cream

icecream2A dish of parmesan ice cream.

In this month’s Etsy Kitchen History, I explore historic flavors of ice cream (musk!), ice cream molds (roast chicken!), and attempt a fascinating 18th century recipes for Parmesan ice cream.

In the 1780s, King Ferdinand IV of Naples and his wife arrived at the San Gregorio Convent to find “…a table covered, and every appearance of a most plentiful cold repast, consisting of several joints of meat, hams, fowl, fish and various other dishes.” The King and his entourage were bummed, however, because they had just eaten. But not wanting to seem impolite, they sat down, and Queen Maria Carolina “…choose a slice of cold turkey, which, on being cut up, turned out a large piece of lemon ice. All the other dishes were ices of various kinds, disguised under the forms of joints of meat, fish and fowl.” The King and the nuns alike had a hearty laugh at the joke.

Read more on Etsy here! And on Four Pounds Flour this week, I’ll be posting about two more unique historic flavors: ambergris and lapsang souchong.