Lemon Ice Cream (1844)
Reader ratingsThomas Masters’s lemon ice cream of 1844: cream, sugar rubbed with lemon peel and the juice of two lemons, mixed cold and frozen.
- Recipe makes
- About 1 quart, 10 small servings
- Prep
- Total
Mixing takes 15 minutes. Chill the mixture for at least an hour, churn it for 20 to 25 minutes, then give it about 2 hours in the freezer to firm.
Lemon ice cream beside a whole lemon.
The story behind the recipe
Lemon ice cream in Thomas Masters’s The Ice Book of 1844 takes its flavor from the peel as much as the juice. The book, the manual for his patent freezing machine, gives a pint of cream, two lemons and half a pound of sugar, and ends: “Mix; freeze. One quart.”
Rasped on sugar
The lemons are rasped on sugar and the sugar scraped “into the vessel you are about to mix in.” The juice goes in after it. Masters is careful with peel: in the orange ice cream printed just below, the fruit is rasped “slightly, lest the cream become bitter.”
Read more about this recipe
Nothing to cook
The mixture is never heated. Most of Masters’s cream ices are made this way, mixed cold and poured into the freezer, with only a few, such as the vanilla and the brown bread, stirred over the fire like a custard first. A cold mixture like this one could go straight into the inventor’s machine, with nothing to wait for but the freezing.
Making it today
We keep Masters’s quantities, a pint of cream to two lemons and half a pound of sugar. Grating the zest into the sugar does the work of the rasp. Whipping cream stands in for his cream, and a home ice-cream machine for his. Chill the mixture well first: modern recipes for this cold-mixed kind give it at least an hour in the fridge. The four-minute claim and what lay behind it are in How Did a Cook Make Ice Cream in Four Minutes in 1844?. The cooked ice cream from the same pages is the Brown-Bread Ice Cream (1844).
LEMON ICE CREAM.
Take one pint of cream; rasp two lemons on sugar; scrape off into the vessel you are about to mix in; squeeze them, and add the juice; half a pound of sugar. Mix; freeze. One quart.
Recipe makes: About 1 quart, 10 small servings
Ingredients
For about 1 quart, 10 small servings. Quantities are shown as written.
Quantities as written here, for about 1 quart, 10 small servings.
- Lemons2
- Caster sugar8 oz
- Whipping cream20 fl oz
Measurement notes
Ingredients as written here
- 2 lemons
- 8 oz caster sugar
- 20 fl oz whipping cream
Equipment
Fine grater- Mixing bowl
Citrus juicer- Ice-cream machine
- Freezer container with a lid
Instructions
Put the bowl of your ice-cream machine in the freezer the day before, if it needs it.
Finely grate the zest of the lemons into the mixing bowl, taking only the yellow part. Add the caster sugar and rub the zest into it with your fingertips until the sugar is damp and pale yellow.
Squeeze the lemons and stir the juice into the sugar.
Pour in the whipping cream and stir until the sugar has dissolved, 2 to 3 minutes.
Cover and refrigerate for at least 1 hour, until very cold.
Churn in the ice-cream machine until it is thick, like soft-serve, 20 to 25 minutes.
Serve at once, soft, or scrape it into the freezer container, cover and freeze for about 2 hours to firm.
Nutrition
290calories per serving
- Recipe makes
- About 1 quart, 10 small servings
- Servings
- 10
Estimated per serving from USDA FoodData Central values for heavy whipping cream, sugar and lemon juice.
Recipe notes
When adjusting quantities
Masters’s own quantities, which he says make one quart. Scale the lemons with the cream.
Notes
Quantities mentioned in these notes don’t change when you adjust the servings.
Caster sugar is superfine sugar; it dissolves quickly in cold cream. Whipping cream is about 35 to 40 percent fat, the same as American heavy cream. If your lemons are small, add the juice of half a third lemon. Frozen hard, it needs about 10 minutes out of the freezer before scooping. Contains milk.
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), Lemon Ice Cream
Recipe details
- Course
- Dessert
- Dish family
- Desserts & Sweets
- Region
- British
- Era
- 19th century
- Source decade
- 1840s
- Main ingredient
- Milk & creamFruit
- Difficulty
- Easy
- Season
- Summer