Two scoops of rosy pink strawberry ice cream flecked with bits of red fruit in a footed glass dish on a saucer, with three small round vanilla wafers and a spoon beside it. — Strawberry ice cream flecked with fruit, with vanilla wafers.

Strawberry Ice Cream (1931)

Name: Strawberry Ice Cream
Prep time: 20 min
Cook time: 25 min
Total time: 3 h 45 min
Cuisine: American
Ingredients: 2¼ lb fresh strawberries; 1½ cups sugar; 2 cups light cream; 1½ tbsp lemon juice; ¼ tsp salt

Jump to recipe

Strawberry ice cream from Aunt Sammy’s Radio Recipes Revised, 1931: fresh berries stood in sugar, pressed through a colander and churned with light cream and lemon juice.

By The Forgotten MenuPublished Oct 29, 2026

Recipe makes: About 2 quarts, 10 servings
Prep: 20 min
Cook: 25 min
Total: 3 hr 45 min

Includes 2 hours for the chopped berries to stand in their sugar in the refrigerator and 1 hour in the freezer after churning, which the book calls ripening. Churning time depends on the machine.

Jump to recipe Read the story

Strawberry ice cream flecked with fruit, with vanilla wafers.

The story behind the recipe

No eggs and no custard go into this ice cream, only chopped strawberries sweetened and left to stand, pressed through a colander, stirred into thin cream and frozen. It closes one of the July dinners in Aunt Sammy’s Radio Recipes Revised, after fried or broiled chicken, with vanilla wafers on the side.

Why didn’t it need cooking?

The book’s French Vanilla Ice Cream, on the next page, starts from a custard of milk and four eggs stirred in a double boiler. This one lets the sugar do the work. The berries stand in it “in a cold place for 2 or 3 hours,” long enough to draw out their juice and dissolve the sugar into a syrup, so the mixture is ready to freeze as soon as the cream goes in. The book’s ice creams were frozen in the hand-cranked freezer of the day, packed in crushed ice and salt, with the crank turned slowly; when the dasher came out, the freezer was packed with more ice and salt and left for an hour or more to ripen. Mousses and creams frozen without stirring had a leaflet of their own, which the book names in a footnote. When the Housekeepers’ Chat toured the new book on 7 July 1931, it pointed summer listeners to the ice-cream pages; What Did Aunt Sammy Tell Listeners to Cook in July 1931? follows that tour through the book.

A generation earlier, Fannie Farmer’s Strawberry Ice Cream (1896) thickened its base with arrowroot cooked in milk. The government’s version cooks nothing at all.

Making it today

The book asks for “single cream,” which we read as light cream; half-and-half is the lighter choice. Its “1½ quarts” of berries is a dry measure, about 2¼ lb by weight, and the lemon juice is our pick from its “1 to 2 tablespoons.” An electric ice cream maker does the cranking, and the freezer does the ripening.

Wash and cap the berries. Chop them, cover with the sugar, and let stand in a cold place for 2 or 3 hours. ...

Ruth Van Deman and Fanny Walker YeatmanAunt Sammy’s Radio Recipes Revised (Washington: U.S. Department of Agriculture, Bureau of Home Economics, May 1931), Strawberry Ice Cream, p. 124

Read the full story

Ingredients

For about 2 quarts, 10 servings. Quantities are shown as written.

Quantities as written here, for about 2 quarts, 10 servings.

Fresh strawberries2.25 lb
Sugar1 1/2 cups
Light cream2 cups
Lemon juice1 1/2 tbsp
Salt1/4 tsp

Ingredients as written here

2¼ lb fresh strawberries
1½ cups sugar
2 cups light cream
1½ tbsp lemon juice
¼ tsp salt

Equipment

Large bowl and chopping board
Colander with small holes, set over a second bowl
Ladle or large spoon, for pressing
Ice cream maker, 2-quart size, or a smaller one used twice
Lidded freezer container

Instructions

Wash the strawberries, drain them well and pull off the green caps. Chop them small.
Put the chopped berries in the large bowl and stir in the sugar. Cover and refrigerate for 2 hours, stirring once, until the sugar has dissolved into a syrup.
Set the colander over the second bowl. Tip in the berries and syrup a part at a time and press them through with the back of the ladle, scraping the underside of the colander into the bowl. Discard any tough bits left behind.
Stir in the light cream, lemon juice and salt. The mixture should be cold; if it has warmed, refrigerate it for 30 minutes.
Churn in the ice cream maker according to its directions until it is as thick as soft-serve, about 25 minutes. If your machine cannot take the whole batch, churn half the mixture and keep the rest refrigerated for a second turn.
Pack the ice cream into the freezer container, cover and freeze for at least 1 hour to firm before serving.

Nutrition

240calories per serving

Recipe makes: About 2 quarts, 10 servings
Servings: 10

Estimated per serving (10) from USDA FoodData Central values for raw strawberries, sugar and light cream.

Recipe notes

When adjusting quantities

The book’s quantities make about 2 quarts. Halve them for a 1-quart machine, or churn the full batch in two turns, keeping the second half in the refrigerator.

Notes

Quantities mentioned in these notes don’t change when you adjust the servings.

The ingredients and their amounts are the book’s, with the berries given by weight and the lemon juice set at 1½ tablespoons. The 2-hour stand in the refrigerator, the electric machine and the hour in the freezer stand in for the book’s cold place, its salt-and-ice freezer and its hour of ripening packed in more ice and salt. To freeze it the old way, pack the freezer can with 1 part rock salt to 4 to 6 parts crushed ice and turn the crank slowly. Use pasteurized cream, keep the mixture refrigerated until it is churned, and store the ice cream covered in the freezer; don’t refreeze ice cream that has melted. Contains dairy.

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.