Brown-Bread Ice Cream (1844)
Reader ratingsBrown-bread ice cream from Thomas Masters’s Ice Book of 1844: cream thickened with oven-browned bread and sponge fingers, frozen and finished with toasted crumbs and a little maraschino.
- Recipe makes
- About 1¼ quarts, 12 small servings
- Prep
- Cook
- Total
Toasting the bread and cooking the cream take about 35 minutes. The cream then chills for at least 4 hours, churns for 20 to 30 minutes and firms in the freezer for about 2 hours.
Brown-bread ice cream with a slice of toasted bread.
The story behind the recipe
The bread goes in twice in Thomas Masters’s brown-bread ice cream of 1844. His Ice Book, the manual for his patent freezing machine, cooks one browned slice into the cream and stirs two more through the ice at the end.
Bread in the cream
The first slice is browned in the oven and put in a stewpan with half a pound of sugar, half a pint of milk, two sponge biscuits and a pint of cream. The pan is stirred over a gentle fire “like custard” and the mixture passed through a sieve. There are no egg yolks, as there are in his vanilla: the bread and the biscuits are the only thickening.
Read more about this recipe
Crumbs at the end
Two more slices are browned, crumbled and sifted “as for bread crumbs,” and added once the ice is frozen “with a glass of maraschino,” the clear cherry liqueur. In Masters’s machine, mixing in a late addition took only a few more turns: his advertisement pages say ginger can be stirred into a frozen lemon ice by “giving two or three turns to the wheel to mix it.”
All that cooking happens long before the freezer is charged; the Lemon Ice Cream (1844) on the page before needs none.
Making it today
Masters doesn’t say what bread he used. We use plain sandwich bread, white or whole wheat, and sponge fingers for his sponge biscuits. Chill the cooked cream thoroughly before churning, as modern brown-bread recipes do, and fold the crumbs in after churning so they stay crisp. Masters’s “glass of maraschino” was probably a wine glass; we use 1½ fl oz, and it is optional: without it the ice cream is alcohol-free. How Did a Cook Make Ice Cream in Four Minutes in 1844? weighs Masters’s claim of ice cream in four minutes.
BROWN-BREAD ICE CREAM.
Take a slice of bread, browned in the oven, half a pound of sugar, half a pint of milk, two sponge biscuits, one pint of cream; put in a stewpan; stir over a gentle fire, like custard; pass through a sieve; brown two slices of bread in the oven; crumble them, and sift them, as for bread crumbs. When the mixture is frozen, add the bread crumbs, with a glass of maraschino. One quart.
Recipe makes: About 1¼ quarts, 12 small servings
Ingredients
For about 1¼ quarts, 12 small servings. Quantities are shown as written.
Quantities as written here, for about 1¼ quarts, 12 small servings.
- Bread, white or whole wheat3 slices
- Caster sugar8 oz
- Whole milk10 fl oz
- Sponge fingers2
- Whipping cream20 fl oz
- Maraschino liqueur, optional1 1/2 fl oz
Measurement notes
Ingredients as written here
- 3 slices bread, white or whole wheat
- 8 oz caster sugar
- 10 fl oz whole milk
- 2 sponge fingers
- 20 fl oz whipping cream
- 1.5 fl oz maraschino liqueur, optional
Equipment
- Baking sheet
- Heavy saucepan
Wooden spoon- Fine sieve and a coarse sieve
- Mixing bowl
- Ice-cream machine, 2-liter size, or churn in two batches
- Freezer container with a lid
Instructions
Heat the oven to 350°F (180°C). Lay the bread on the baking sheet and bake until dry and golden brown on both sides, 15 to 20 minutes, turning once. Let it cool. Set two slices aside for the crumbs.
Tear the remaining slice into the saucepan. Add the caster sugar, whole milk, the sponge fingers, broken up, and the whipping cream.
Set the pan over low heat and stir until the sugar dissolves and the mixture is steaming hot and the bread and sponge fingers have softened completely, about 10 minutes. Do not let it boil.
Pour it through the fine sieve into the mixing bowl, pressing the softened bread through with the wooden spoon. Scrape the underside of the sieve into the bowl and discard anything left in it.
Let it cool, then cover and refrigerate for at least 4 hours, or overnight.
Crumble the two reserved slices and rub them through the coarse sieve to make fine crumbs. Keep them in a closed container until needed.
Churn the cold cream in the ice-cream machine until it is thick, like soft-serve, 20 to 30 minutes.
Fold in the crumbs and the maraschino liqueur, if using, scrape the ice cream into the freezer container, cover and freeze for about 2 hours to firm.
Nutrition
290calories per serving
- Recipe makes
- About 1¼ quarts, 12 small servings
- Servings
- 12
Estimated per serving from USDA FoodData Central values for the listed ingredients, with the maraschino.
Recipe notes
When adjusting quantities
Masters’s own quantities, which he says make one quart; churned, they fill a large home machine. One slice of the bread goes into the cream and two make the crumbs.
Notes
Quantities mentioned in these notes don’t change when you adjust the servings.
Caster sugar is superfine sugar. If your ice-cream machine holds less than 2 liters, churn the cream in two batches and fold half the crumbs into each. Contains milk, wheat and egg (in the sponge fingers). Maraschino contains alcohol; leave it out for children.
Scaling changes the ingredients only; pan sizes and cooking times need their own judgment. To adapt this recipe further, try the recipe tool at TuneMyRecipe (opens in a new tab), our sister site.
Sources and attribution
After Thomas Masters, The Ice Book (London, 1844), Brown-Bread Ice Cream
Recipe details
- Course
- Dessert
- Dish family
- Desserts & Sweets
- Region
- British
- Era
- 19th century
- Source decade
- 1840s
- Main ingredient
- Milk & cream
- Difficulty
- Intermediate