Vanilla Ice Cream (1840)
Reader ratingsEliza Leslie’s vanilla ice cream, 1840: cream sweetened with vanilla-steeped milk and sugar, churned, then packed into a mold and frozen a second time.
- Recipe makes
- About 3½ cups, 6 servings
- Prep
- Cook
- Total
The milk steeps for 20 minutes, the mixture chills for about 2 hours, churns for about 25 minutes and then freezes in the mold for 3 to 4 hours. Start in the morning for an evening party, or make it the day before.
Vanilla ice cream turned out of its mold, with squares of plain cake.
The story behind the recipe
Leslie’s vanilla ice cream has no eggs: a vanilla bean simmered in milk, sugar, and a quart of rich cream, frozen in a freezer set in ice and salt, then packed into a mold and frozen a second time before it was turned out. Vanilla is the first of the six ice creams on the bill of fare for Lincoln’s 1865 inaugural ball.
Frozen twice
No confectioner’s recipe from the ball survives. In Eliza Leslie’s Directions for Cookery (eleventh edition, 1840), the household book used here, the vanilla recipe is three sentences long and sends the reader back to her lemon ice cream for the method, which runs to about two pages.
In it, the cream went into a freezer standing in a tub of coarse salt and ice, and the cook turned it by the handle and scraped down the sides until it froze, usually in about two hours. Then it went into a mold, the mold went back into fresh ice and salt, and the tub was covered with pieces of old carpet. The second freezing mattered to her: without it, the ice cream would be rough and coarse and feel in the mouth “like broken icicles.” It shouldn’t run much past two hours, though, or it became “inconveniently and unpleasantly hard.” The newspaper account of the supper, once the crowd reached the tables, is in What Was on the Sweets Table at Lincoln’s Inaugural Ball?
Read more about this recipe
Making it today
An ice cream maker does the work of the freezer and the handle, and a freezer does the work of the tub. We keep both freezings, because the mold is what turns a scoop of ice cream into Leslie’s shape on a plate. A home freezer is gentler than her ice and salt, so the second freezing takes longer than her two hours. Her proportions are kept at half scale, and the vanilla is steeped in the milk as she says, though we take it off the heat once it simmers.
Leslie said to send round sponge cake or Savoy biscuits with ice cream. The Lady Cake (1840), from the same bill, is a white almond cake that suits it well and can be made the day before.
Split up half a vanilla bean, and boil it slowly in half a pint of milk till all the flavour is drawn out, which you may know by tasting it. Then mix into the milk half a pound of powdered loaf-sugar, and stir it very hard into a quart of rich cream. Put it into the freezer, and proceed as directed in the receipt for Lemon Ice Cream; freezing it twice.
Recipe makes: About 3½ cups, 6 servings
Ingredients
For about 3½ cups, 6 servings. Quantities are shown as written.
Quantities as written here, for about 3½ cups, 6 servings.
- Vanilla bean1/4
- Whole milk4 fl oz
- Granulated sugar4 oz
- Heavy cream, well chilled16 fl oz
Measurement notes
Ingredients as written here
- ¼ vanilla bean
- 4 fl oz whole milk
- 4 oz granulated sugar
- 16 fl oz heavy cream, well chilled
Equipment
Small saucepan- Mixing bowl
Fine sieve- Ice cream maker
- 1-quart mold or loaf pan
- Plastic wrap
- Flat serving plate
Instructions
Split the vanilla bean lengthwise and scrape the seeds into the milk in the saucepan; add the pod.
Bring the milk just to a simmer, take it off the heat, cover and leave for 20 minutes.
Take out the pod. Stir the sugar into the warm milk until it has dissolved, then strain it into the mixing bowl and let it cool.
Stir in the heavy cream. Cover and refrigerate until very cold, about 2 hours.
Churn in the ice cream maker according to its instructions until thick, like soft-serve, about 25 minutes.
Meanwhile, line the mold with plastic wrap, leaving some overhanging, and put it in the freezer with the serving plate.
Spoon the ice cream into the mold, pressing it into the corners so there are no air pockets, and smooth the top. Fold the wrap over and freeze for 3 to 4 hours, until firm enough to hold its shape.
To serve, dip the mold in warm water for a few seconds, turn the ice cream out onto the chilled plate and peel off the wrap.
Nutrition
360calories per serving
- Recipe makes
- About 3½ cups, 6 servings
- Servings
- 6
Estimated per serving (6 to the batch) from USDA FoodData Central values for the listed ingredients.
Recipe notes
When adjusting quantities
This is half of Leslie’s quantity, which suits most home ice cream makers. Make the full amount only if your machine holds 2 quarts.
Notes
Quantities mentioned in these notes don’t change when you adjust the servings.
Leslie warned that ice cream left too long in its second freezing turns hard; if yours has been frozen overnight, let the mold stand in the refrigerator for 15 to 20 minutes before turning it out. Keeps for a week in the freezer. 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 Eliza Leslie, Directions for Cookery, in Its Various Branches, 11th ed. (Philadelphia: Carey & Hart, 1840), Vanilla Ice Cream
Recipe details
- Course
- Dessert
- Dish family
- Desserts & Sweets
- Region
- American
- Era
- 19th century
- Source decade
- 1840s
- Main ingredient
- Milk & cream
- Difficulty
- Intermediate
- Occasion
- Dinner party