Icy creams & princess bombs

Ices have been adored for centuries, either by kings on their feasting tables, or by working class folk from a ‘penny lick’ glass. They were moulded into various shapes; encased cake or fruit; were topped with chocolate, fancy sugar treats and meringue. Some prefer three different-flavoured scoops on their cone, some want plain vanilla and nothing else, nearly melted in a bowl.

The bill of fare for Charles II’s banquet course at the 1671 Garter feast, according to Elias Ashmole in The Institution, Laws, and Ceremonies of the Most Noble Order of the Garter (1672), mentions ‘One plate of Ice Cream’ as one of the dishes for the sovereign’s evening table. This is the first record of the term ‘ice cream’ in England. However, the earliest English ice-cream recipe dates from about 10 years earlier and is by the hand of Lady Ann Fanshawe (who called it ‘Icy Cream’ rather than ice cream) in her manuscript recipe book of 1625–1680. This recipe predates the first recipe to appear in print in Mrs. Mary Eales’s Receipts from 1718 and is the earliest in the whole of Europe. Mary Eales’s recipe ‘To Ice cream’ had long been assumed the first English recipe before Lady Ann’s recipe for an ‘Icy Cream’ was discovered.

I can’t claim that the ice-cream freezing technique was invented in England: it was most probably invented in Italy where it was described by an Italian scholar in his Problemata Aristoteles in 1530. A popular myth – which has been disputed by the formidable Elizabeth David – is that the Florentine Catherine de Medici and her confectioners brought the art of making ices to the French capital in the sixteenth century.

Georgian ices

French and Italian confectioners came to England and set up shops in London in the 1760s. In these first ice-cream parlours you could enjoy an ice cream or take a larger quantity home for a special occasion. One vendor, the Italian Domenico Negri, had a shop called ‘The Pot and Pineapple’ in Berkeley Square where he sold ‘all sorts of English, French, and Italian wet and dry sweetmeats’, according to his trade card. One of his apprentices was Frederick Nutt, who published his fabulous book The Complete Confectioner in 1789. Nutt gives 32 recipes for ice cream and 24 for water ices.

Negri’s shop eventually came into the ownership of one of his apprentices, James Gunter of the Gunter family, who continued the trade into the twentieth century. In the early nineteenth century Gunter employed the Italian confectioner William A. Jarrin as an ornament maker. Jarrin’s book, The Italian Confectioner (1820) has an impressive chapter on ices. He also gave us the very first recipe for an ice-cream bombe, which became very popular at that time. Copper bombe moulds – plain, melon-shaped or in the form of beehives – were manufactured to create these ice-cream puddings. They each had a screw to dispel the vacuum inside the mould so the ice would be easier to unmould.

Pewter ice-cream moulds, part of the collection of food historian Ivan Day

Victorian ices

Ice puddings and ice cream were very popular in the eighteenth century, but saw their heyday in Victorian times. The moulded ice puddings were one of the most technically challenging dishes for a cook to make. Variously shaped copper and pewter ice-cream moulds were produced to look like domes, beehives, flowers, fruit, vegetables, swans, peacocks and other animals.

Other elaborately shaped and presented iced puddings were made, too. The cover design of the book The Royal Confectioner (1891) by Queen Victoria’s chef de cuisine, Charles Elmé Francatelli, showed a spectacular iced pudding named after the queen. The pudding sat on a comport moulded out of ice in the form of two entwined dolphins, a mould of which he also had in an advertisement in the back of his book. The ice itself was made in a melon mould with ‘Plombières ice cream’ to which ‘diavolini’ – ginger comfits, dried apricots and dried cherries – were added. The ‘Plombières ice cream’ was made with bitter and sweet almonds; orange flower water and apricot jam. Then the finished puddings were sprinkled with shaved almonds and chopped pistachios to look like a real melon. The top and base of the pudding was garnished with ‘small fancy fruit-shaped water ices’, which were also a popular treat.

Ice-cream flavours were versatile: there are recipes for bergamot water ice, diverse fruit and cordial sorbets, chocolate ice cream, burnt filbert ice cream, brown bread ice cream and various fruit ice creams. A peculiar one is a recipe for a parmesan ice cream by Frederick Nutt.

The challenge wasn’t only in creating the most sensational of puddings, it had to be frozen at a time when freezers weren’t yet invented. Today we have all kinds of fancy freezing equipment, but in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries the techniques were a little more primitive, although at the same time quite inventive.

Pewter and copper ice-cream moulds, part of the collection of Ivan Day

Georgian ice-cream makers

In the seventeenth century ice cream was made in a closed tin box that was left to freeze, producing a solid ice cream. By the mid-eighteenth century the ice-cream mixture was frozen by pouring it into a pewter canister with a handled lid called a sorbetière. The sorbetière was placed in a wooden bucket containing a mixture of ice and salt, or saltpetre. The right ratio of salt to ice would prevent the ice from melting. The ice-cream mixture was then turned by the handle of the sorbetière to mix and an ice spaddle or houlette was used to scrape down the frozen mixture from the sides and into the rest of the soon-to-be ice cream.

When the ice cream was thoroughly frozen, it was removed from the sorbetière and either transferred to a pewter ice-cream mould, or to an ice-cream pail. These pails were incredibly inventive things and benefited from a double bottom on which the ice was placed; the pail that held the ice cream was placed on top; and then finally the lid was placed on top of the pail and also filled with ice. This was created to have a fashionable item to bring to the table and keep the ice cream cold. They were made in France, but also by the English potteries. As they were an item only for the highest of the elite, they were rare, and are even more rare to find today.

Icehouses

Ice cream wasn’t a privilege only for city dwellers. Ice creams were also made in the large country houses, which had icehouses built in the gardens of their estate as early as the seventeenth century. James I is attributed with ordering the building of the first icehouse in Britain in Greenwich Park. Icehouses have been known from the Romans, the ancient Greeks and even as far back as Mesopotamian civilisation. A clay tablet from around 1780 BCE records the foundation of an icehouse in Terqa, a city on the banks of the middle Euphrates.

These early examples of icehouses looked a little like brick-built igloos and were often located in a sheltered area close to freshwater lakes or ponds. This is because the location would be coolest, but also to be able to easily transport ice from the frozen lake into the icehouse when it happened to freeze solid. Ponds, such as the one at old Eglinton Castle estate in North Ayrshire, were sometimes created especially to supply ice for the icehouse.

The icehouse would often have more than one door, acting as an airlock to keep the warmth outside. The inside of the building was often further insulated with straw, an insulation Mary Eales also mentions in her 1718 recipe.

After being a privilege to the upper class for centuries, by the middle of the nineteenth century, ices had become available to ordinary people. Henry Mayhew (in London Labour and the London Poor, 1851) mentioned that ices were being sold on the streets of London in 1850, and that it appeared the working-class folk didn’t enjoy these ice-cold treats at first. The two first street sellers of ‘penny lick’ ices went out of business; however, trade did pick up, despite having one of the smallest numbers of traders on the streets.

Bringing natural ice to London

Change came when immigrants from Italy and Italian-speaking Switzerland came to London; by 1860, Italian ice cream became a familiar sight in the streets. One of these early entrepreneurs, Carlo Gatti, founded his first ice-cream shops in London in 1851. He became possibly one of the first wholesale ice-cream makers in England. Gatti also transported large blocks of natural Norwegian ice by boat to London. The building now occupied by the Canal Museum just off Regent’s Canal is a former ice warehouse of his, originally constructed around 1863 to store the imported ice.

In 1899 the ‘penny lick’ was banned due to fear of the spread of diseases such as tuberculosis. ‘Penny licks’ were glasses made of thick pressed glass and were sold as a half penny, penny or twopence lick. After the customer had licked the small glass clean, it would be washed in a basin of dirty, greasy dishwater. Luckily the ice-cream vendors could still sell their cheap blocks of ice called ‘Hokey Pokey’ which was a slang term for ice cream in general and often resembled a Neapolitan layered ice. But sales did drop until the ice-cream cone was introduced.

The Queen of Ices

Agnes Bertha Marshall, crowned with the title ‘Queen of Ices’ by ice-cream afficionados today, was an English culinary entrepreneur. She published two books entirely devoted to ices: a thin blue volume named The Book of Ices (1888) and her later book Fancy Ices (1894). They remain much sought after books to this day.

She also invented an ‘ice cave’ to keep ices cold and an ice-cream machine capable of freezing a pint of ice-cream mixture in five minutes, for which she was granted a patent. Her inventions would further develop ice-cream making in England. She quite remarkably suggests using liquid oxygen to freeze ice cream, which was quite modern for the day.

In addition to publishing her books she had a weekly magazine called The Table and ran her own cookery school as well as an agency for domestic staff. She had her own shop selling her ice-cream maker, ice caves, cabinet freezers and other kitchen utensils and supplies. Marshall’s pewter ice-cream moulds in all imaginable sizes and shapes, and fancy entrée moulds in tin and copper, were all compiled in The Catalogue of Moulds (c. 1880) which contained more than 400 engravings of the moulds available in her shop. This really shows the scale of her business, which must have been unique for its day, particularly having a woman at its head.

Ice-cream cones

It is assumed that Italo Marchiony invented the waffle ice-cream cone in New York in 1896. He received a patent for ‘a molding apparatus for forming ice cream cups’ in 1903. However, in 1902 Antonio Valvona, an ice-cream manufacturer of Manchester, received a patent for his ‘Apparatus for baking biscuit-cups for ice-cream’. These two men, however, are not the inventors of an ice-cream cone, although they created devices to mould wafer cups.

Food historian Ivan Day notes, in Ice Cream: A History (2011) that wafer cones are first mentioned in Bernard Claremont’s The Professed Cook in 1769. They were initially not used for ice cream but to serve with other sweetmeats during the dessert course. The first record of someone actually filling one of these wafer cones or cornets with ice cream is Charles Elmé Francatelli, who mentioned them in The Modern Cook in 1846 as a garnish in a recipe for his ‘Chesterfield Cream Ice’. The illustration in his book shows the tall ice-cream pudding decorated with a crown of ice-cream cones at the base. He instructs to fill the cones with ice cream.

Ice cream for everyone

In the early twentieth century, ice-cream making experienced a decline because of wartime shortages of milk and sugar. The production and selling of ice cream was banned by the Ministry of Food in 1917 but, as soon as the war was over, the ice-cream trade came back as strong as it was before. In 1922, T. Walls and Sons Ltd became the first nationwide ice-cream wholesaler. They had tricycle ice-cream carts driving around London with the words ‘Stop me and buy one’ painted onto the front; by 1939 their numbers would be 8500 nationwide. Lyons Ices followed with their ice-cream parlours and others followed suit. After the Second World War and into the 1960s ices and ice lollies (iceblocks/popsicles) were factory-made on a large scale and had become an important part of a good night out at the cinema. Soon the American-style soft ices such as the still-popular ‘Mr Whippy’ followed. The contrast with the artisanal ice cream of the Italian and French ice-cream sellers and confectioners of Victorian England was immense.

Flavours went from natural to artificial: the quality of the milk, eggs and cream were questionable and so ice cream became another mass-produced food worldwide. Luckily, in the last 20 years it has become fashionable again to make homemade ices and restaurants are experimenting with new and exciting flavours. The quality of the Ingredients plays an important role, and dairy farms market their ice creams made with milk and cream from their own herd. The future of ices is bright: maybe they will never look as dazzling and dramatic again as they did in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, but they will taste fantastic. Because when the best Ingredients are used, you will get the best result.

Pewter sorbetière, spaddle and bucket from
the collection of Ivan Day

Ice cream without an ice-cream machine

Homemade ice cream is exceptionally nice, but personally, I don’t want to buy an ice-cream machine: they are big and ugly and will gather dust and take up space. I do have an ice-cream maker, but it’s made of pewter, small, quaint and dates from the early 1800s: it’s called a ‘sorbetière’. Because not everyone is lucky enough to have a traditional sorbetière, the following method will do the trick just fine.

Early ice-cream recipes do not use egg yolks, but do feel free to use this technique for making ices with eggs as well. Eggs will keep the ice cream frozen for longer, and will also make it creamier. I find ice cream with egg yolks a little too heavy, while eggless ice cream feels nice and thin on the tongue. If you find the ice creams here too delicate for your liking, you may add up to 5 egg yolks per 500 ml (17 fl oz/2 cups) of cream; however, keep in mind that with 5 egg yolks, you essentially have frozen custard.

I find that with delicately flavoured ice creams, you need to use the minimum amount of egg yolks to keep the flavour nice and fresh. So give the eggless version a try, and if you don’t find it creamy enough, add a yolk, and then another.

An important thing to note is that you cannot reduce the sugar content of the recipes, as the sugar is of importance to prevent the ice cream freezing into a solid brick. As much as I like to reduce sugar content in most recipes, you just can’t do it with ice cream.

What you need

A plastic or pewter vessel, or an aluminium cake tin (make sure you can fit the vessel into your freezer); a wooden spatula; a whisk, or handmixer; a towel; an ice-cream mould, chilled (optional).

Method

Put the vessel in the freezer to get cold.

Using the recipe of your choice, bring the cream to a simmer with the flavourings and the sugar, then remove it from the heat and leave to infuse for at least 1 hour, after which you may remove any flavouring items, if necessary. Allow the mixture to cool completely.

Pour the cooled mixture into the ice-cold vessel and return it to the freezer for 45 minutes. After 45 minutes, whisk the mixture with a whisk, mixer or spatula. Return it to the freezer for 30 minutes. After 30 minutes repeat the whisking and return it to the freezer for a further 30 minutes. After 30 more minutes repeat the whisking and return it to the freezer for a further 30 minutes.

The mixture should be getting thicker and thicker at the edges of the vessel. Make sure you scrape the frozen mixture back into the centre and whisk well each time. Return it to the freezer for 30 minutes between whisking and repeat until you get ice cream.

It will take 2–3 hours, but it’s totally worth the time you’ll spend.

When the ice cream is ready, you can scoop it out and into an ice-cream mould, or you can transfer it to a freezer-safe airtight container. It will keep for a week, after which the texture will begin to be less pleasant.

Keep in mind that if you are not using egg yolks, the ice cream will melt more quickly.