Behind the Recipe -- Jeri Quinzio

Friends, Romans -- Have Some Punch

 

 

It’s not Roman and it’s not punch. Yet, for more than half a century, the fruit ice called
“Roman punch” was wildly popular. I think it deserves a return engagement.

Descriptions and recipes for Roman punch are as numerous as the people who made it. Generally, though, it was a lemon or other fruit sorbet mixed with enough alcohol of various kinds and combinations to make it freeze slushy rather than solid. All sorts of liquors were used in making the punch. Rum was nearly ubiquitous, but everything from Chablis to Champagne made an appearance. Roman punch was served as a palate cleanser between courses at elaborate dinners.

In her 19th century etiquette book, Manners and Social Usage, Mary Elizabeth Wilson Sherwood ruled that Roman punch should always be eaten with a spoon. She called it the best “provocative of appetite” and said that coming after the heavy roasts, it “prepares the palate and stomach for the canvas-back ducks and other game. Then comes the salad and cheese, then the ices and sweets, and then cheese savourie or cheese fondu.”

I particularly like the crotchety description of Roman punch from All About Ices, Jellies and Creams written at the turn of the 20th century by two British confectioners, Henry G. Harris and S.P. Borella.  After reporting that “no two confectioners in Britain appear to agree entirely as to its composition,” they wrote:

The most impossible combinations are recommended – rum, brandy, green tea, black tea, cinnamon, nutmeg, pineapple, ginger – in addition to the three really necessary and
harmonious alcoholic items.

According to them, the three necessary and harmonious liquors were Champagne, kirsch, and maraschino.  

In The Complete Confectioner, Pastry-Cook and Baker, published in 1864, the prominent Philadelphia confectioner Eleanor Parkinson called for “a glass or two of each, of rum, brandy, champagne, and Maraschino.” She titled her recipe “Punch à la Romaine – Roman Punch Ice.”

Juliet Corson, in her 1886 book Miss Corson’s Practical American Cookery, distinguished between ordinary Roman punch and a “finer sort.” Ordinary was “a plain fruit-ice to which rum is added, a gill to a quart, and, in serving, a teaspoonful of rum is placed in each glass.” The finer version added meringue to the fruit ice and called for “one glass each of rum and brandy.” Fannie Farmer made her Roman punch with tea and rum.

These days, most of us aren’t having multi-course meals or multi-liquor palate cleansers, but a less elaborate version of Roman punch is a terrific summer dessert. Sarah Rorer’s recipe is so simple it works even if you’re just grilling burgers in the backyard. Feel free to sip or spoon it.

Roman Punch

Make one quart of lemon water ice. When ready to serve, fill it into small punch glasses, make a little well in the centre and fill the space with good Jamaica rum. – Ice Creams, Water Ices, Frozen Puddings Together With Refreshments For All Social Affairs, Sarah Tyson Rorer, 1913.

Last Call for the Highball

“Great balls of fire!”

If that was your reaction the first time you swallowed a shot of rough brandy, you are not alone. Early in the 19th century, the phrase “a ball of fire” referred to a glass of cheap, fiery brandy. The Irish called a glass of whiskey “a ball of malt.” In fact, the tasting room at the Jameson whiskey headquarters in Dublin is called “The Ball of Malt.” As playwright Sean O’Casey put it, “There’s nothing like a ball o’ malt occasional like.”

When the phrase crossed the Atlantic, it became “a ball of whiskey.” Though often fiery, the ball was not necessarily Irish. By the late nineteenth century, a bartender had only to hear the word “ball,” and he knew his customer wanted a glass of whiskey.

If that customer wanted seltzer or plain water added to his whiskey to make a longer drink, he asked for a “high ball.”  That’s what they say in St. Louis where, the story goes, the name was born. It seems the local seltzer was popular, and when a customer asked for seltzer with his ball, the barman used a taller glass. The drink became known as a high ball. (I don’t know why they didn’t call it a “tall ball.”) High ball started out as two separate words. Today, they’re joined.

Not everyone agrees with the St. Louis tale. Some say the drink got its name from a railway signal. A ball raised on a pole indicated that the train was running late and the engineer needed to speed up. According to this theory, the drink was so named because it could be made in a hurry. Actually, a simple shot of whiskey would have been quicker.

Another theory is that the highball was named after balls of ice in the drink. But I don’t believe bartenders were freezing ice into balls at the turn of the 20th century.

In the early years of the century, the highball was as prominent in song and story as in barrooms. Everyone from Dorothy Parker to F. Scott Fitzgerald poured highballs for their characters. When Julian English, the hero of John O’Hara’s Appointment in Samarra, met his downfall, he used a vase to make himself “the biggest highball he had ever seen.”

Sheet music cover for "Friend Highball" lyrics and music by William J. McKenna, 1915.

The word began to fade as the name of a drink as people began ordering drinks by their ingredients, as in “a scotch and soda,” or “rye and ginger,” or “whiskey and seltzer.” As  they became more brand-conscious, they ordered a “Dewars and soda,” or “Canadian Club and ginger,” rather than a plain old highball.

Today, for the most part, a highball is a tall glass, not a specific drink. Even in St. Louis, the ball is over.

Highball 

Another class of mixed drinks, and one which is now very common, is known as highball. The highball in its simplest conception is not a mixed drink at all, except in the mixing of water with the alcoholic beverage. The highball  is served in a tall glass, the whiskey, brandy or gin being first poured into the glass with, usually, a lump of ice, and the glass is then filled with soda water or seltzer or some carbonated beverage.  –   Beverages and Their Adulteration: Origin, Composition, Manufacture, Natural, Artificial, Fermented, Distilled, Alkaloidal and Fruit Juices, Harvey Washington Wiley, 1919.

It's a Cookie. It's a Cake. It's a Super Dessert.

 

Everything old is new again on the Internet. Bloggers and their fans are bringing back recipes for  family favorites and treasured childhood treats. Dishes that have faded from food magazines’ pages are finding their second act in the blogosphere.

Many date back to the days when refrigerator makers were tempting customers to buy the expensive new appliance with refrigerator-reliant recipes. Some have generic names like  “Refrigerator Rolls” or “Refrigerator Cake.” Others, like “Frigidaire Cookies,” are brand-specific.

One of the most ubiquitous and enduring of these refrigerator recipes is for a cake made with cookies and whipped cream. To make it, you spread whipped cream on the cookies, lay them on their side in a row, then frost the log with whipped cream, and chill or freeze it. When it’s time to serve, you slice it diagonally to make the most of the striped effect. You’ve probably had it or made it or, at the very least, heard of it.

Today, most bloggers title it the “Nabisco Famous Chocolate Wafer Cake.” But I’ve also seen it called an icebox cake, a refrigerator cake, a zebra cake, and a caterpillar cake among other names.

Mostly it’s still made in a log shape, but New York’s Magnolia Bakery stacks the cookies in a circle to create a round cake. It’s cut in wedges just like a traditional cake.

Some of today’s recipes gild the lily by adding various liqueurs to the whipped cream, puddling chocolate sauce around it, or topping it with fresh strawberries or raspberries. Most say it has to be made with “Nabisco Famous Chocolate Wafers.”

However, many old recipes don’t specify the cookie flavor, much less the brand. One suggests using either chocolate or ginger cookies. The earliest and simplest recipe I’ve seen is in a 1938 Frigidaire pamphlet, and is titled “Chocolate Cookie Dessert.” It calls for thin chocolate cookies – no brand specified – whipping cream, and vanilla. That’s it.

Another pamphlet labels it “Silhouette Pudding” and, along with the whipped cream, specifies Nabisco chocolate wafers. Apparently they weren’t yet “Famous.”

A rather unusual version is from America’s Cook Book, published in 1940. In this one, instead of plain  whipped cream there is a combination of condensed milk, jam, and heavy cream. The cookie flavor is not specified. It’s called “Cellophane Refrigerator Cake” because the cookies and cream filling are stacked in their cellophane wrapper, rather than arranged on a dish. All the better to keep them in line.

I’ve used a paper towel tube to store a roll of cookie dough in the freezer, but never thought of using the cellophane. It’s a bit fussy to do, but it works well. I used a five and a quarter ounce package of thin ginger cookies, instead of the chocolate ones. And I sprinkled cookie crumbs over the top for added pizazz. The dish that resulted was surprisingly good and tasted more like cake than cookies.

 

Cellophane Refrigerator Cake

Half-cup sweetened condensed milk
One-quarter cup raspberry or strawberry jam
One tablespoon lemon juice
Half-cup heavy cream, whipped [You’ll need another half-cup to frost the loaf.]
One package cellophane wrapped cookies

Blend milk, jam and lemon juice; fold in whipped cream. Open top of cellophane roll and remove all but bottom cooky. Drop a spoonful of filling on this cooky, add another cooky, pressing it down gently; repeat until all cookies are used. Close top of package tightly and chill in refrigerator 12 hours or longer. To serve: unwrap and cut in diagonal slices; top with additional cream. Yield: 6 portions. – America’s Cook Book, New York Herald Tribune, 1940.

The State of Baked Alaska

 

When the U.S. paid the Russians $7.2 million for Alaska in 1867, the purchase inspired several icy epithets and one terrific dessert.

People called Alaska “Johnson’s Polar Bear Garden,” “Seward’s Folly,” and “Seward’s Icebox.” (President Andrew Johnson authorized the purchase. Secretary of State William Seward negotiated it.) The dessert was known variously as “Alaska, Florida,” “Ice-cream en Deguiser,” “Norwegian Omelette,” “Omelette Surprise,” and, finally and forever, Baked Alaska.

Just in case there’s someone out there who doesn’t know, typically Baked Alaska is cake topped with ice cream, covered in meringue, and baked until the meringue is golden.

The principle behind insulating the ice cream with meringue so it could be browned without melting the ice cream was discovered by inventor and scientist Benjamin Thompson, aka Count Rumford, early in the 19th century.  But it was at Delmonico’s, New York’s great Gilded Age restaurant, that the dessert became famous. Chef Charles Ranhofer created a dish he called “Alaska, Florida.” It consisted of individual cakes topped with vanilla and banana ice cream molded into pyramids, covered with meringue, and colored in a hot oven. 

 Mrs. Mary Lincoln, author of the Boston Cook Book (1884), called her version of Baked Alaska “Ice Cream en Deguiser.”  Although she said it was recommended “chiefly for its novelty,” the dessert has endured.

In the 1960s, Baked Alaska became America’s go-to company dessert, probably because everything except the meringue could be bought, rather than made. Most recipes called for purchased ice cream and store-bought or made-from-a-mix cake. So all the hostess had to do was whip up some meringue, pull the cake and ice cream combo out of the freezer, frost it with the meringue and pop it in the oven for a couple of minutes.

It was not only easy and impressive, it was infinitely variable. The 1967 edition of the Better Homes & Gardens Dessert Book featured six different Baked Alaska desserts. “To-each-his-own Alaskas” topped individual cake dessert cups with balls of vanilla ice cream rolled in chopped walnuts or crushed peppermint candy, covered them with meringue and baked them.

Raspberry sherbet and a garnish of sliced canned peaches turned baked Alaska into “Melba Alaska.” “White Mountain Alaska” substituted a baked pie shell for the cake, and was served with chocolate sauce. The recipe for “Ribbon Alaska Pie” also called for a baked pie shell. The ice cream was layered with fudge sauce, and crushed peppermint-stick candy was added to the meringue.

“Mile-high Mocha Alaska” was based on a brownie layer rather than a cake. A recipe for the brownie layer was given, but a note added,  “For a speedy Alaska, use brownie mix.” The recipe suggested chocolate and coffee ice creams.

“N-M Fresh Flowerpot,” the most unusual recipe of the group, was attributed to Neiman-Marcus. It consisted of individual baked Alaskas made in “real red-clay flowerpots!” After the meringue was browned, you were instructed to “Poke two soda straws into each dessert as channels for flower stems. Insert flower in each straw – in the Zodiac Room at Neiman-Marcus, they use garnet roses.”

Your Own Baked Alaska

Make it ’60s style with store-bought components or be contemporary and make everything from scratch. Either way, it’s an elegant dessert.

The base can be one cake or brownie layer, several individuals ones, or a baked pie shell. Whichever you prefer.

Choose your favorite flavor or flavors of ice cream.

Make a meringue. If you like, sprinkle it with coconut, slivered almonds, or confectioners sugar.

Place the base on a rimless cookie sheet (for easier removal after baking).

Top it with the ice cream. Cover with the meringue. Place in freezer.

When ready to serve, put it in a preheated 475 degree oven for about three minutes or until the meringue browns. Slide it off the cookie sheet onto a serving platter and wow your guests.

Cooking the Books

A few years back, Julie Powell cooked her way through Julia Child’s famed Mastering the Art of French Cooking and wrote about the experience on her blog. The blog became a best-selling book, and the book is now a movie, "Julie & Julia." Meryl Streep, no less, plays Julia.

Now others are cooking and blogging about making every recipe from cookbooks by star chefs like Thomas Keller or Gray Kunz.  Give the writers points for ambition. For originality? Not so much.

All of which got me thinking. Someone should make – and write about making –  every recipe from a historic cookbook like, say, Auguste Escoffier’s Ma Cuisine, or  Pellegrino Artusi’s La scienza in cucina e l’art di mangiar bene, or even Fannie Farmer’s The Boston Cooking-School Cook Book. Preferably someone who has more time and energy than I do.

But if I were going to take on that kind of challenge, I’d choose M. Emy’s L’art de bien faire les glaces d’office. Written in 1768, it was the first cookbook totally devoted to ices and ice creams.

Emy made all sorts of ices and ice creams – pistachio, saffron, truffle, rye bread, raspberry, cinnamon, and many more. I’ve already made many of them, and adapted some for my cookbook, Ice Cream: The Ultimate Cold Comfort. Although I didn’t methodically make every single recipe in Emy’s book, it might be fun to do so.

But would it make make a good film? I don’t know. When I made some of the ice creams the first time, there was some drama, or possibly comedy. Like the time I forgot about the ice cream mixture cooking on the stove and wound up with curds and whey all over the kitchen. Or the time I put too much lemon peel in the lemon sorbet, and everyone spent the evening flossing.

A clever screenwriter could probably come up with a romantic angle. Boy meets girl at the dairy case buying cream. They fall in love over their mutual passion for pistachio, break up when he buys frozen yogurt, reconnect over orange marmalade ice cream.

Would Meryl Streep be interested? Probably not. But I think Drew Barrymore would be perfect as a novice cook trying to recreate all the recipes and having lots of kitchen mishaps.  As for Emy, I’d go with David Suchet. He played Inspector Poirot to persnickety perfection, so he’d be great as the meticulous M. Emy. I think the idea has possibilities.

Orange Marmalade Ice Cream

Emy did not believe in using ingredients out of season. He said they tasted better in season, and that waiting for them made them all the sweeter. But when his employer insisted on fruit ice cream in winter, Emy used preserves he’d made when the fruits were at their peak. That is what inspired this wonderful marmalade ice cream. It would probably be even better with preserves you make yourself. But I wouldn’t know.

1 cup top-quality Seville orange marmalade
1 teaspoon freshly squeezed lemon juice
3 cups heavy cream
2 tablespoons orange liqueur, such as Grand Marnier

If the marmalade has very long pieces of peel, chop it a little so the pieces are no more than a half- inch long.

Mix marmalade, lemon juice and cream together in a bowl and chill for at least 12 hours or overnight.

Churn in your ice cream machine, following manufacturer’s instructions. When it’s nearly done, add the liqueur.

Store tightly covered in freezer until ready to serve. Makes one quart.

When life hands you lemons, make sorbet

To  make lemon sorbet, you need three pounds of sugar, three and a half pounds
of salt, thirteen pounds of snow, and three lemons.

That’s according to a recipe from Antonio Latini’s 1692 book Lo scalco alla moderna (The Modern Steward). Of course, the salt and snow were intended for the freezing pot, not for the sorbet itself. Chances are the cooks the book was intended for would have known what Latini meant. It’s unlikely that anyone made a super-salty, snowy sorbet.

When freezing ices and ice creams was new, the ice or snow and salt were as, or more, important than the other ingredients. So they had positions of prominence in recipes. Once the process was more familiar, the ice and salt took a back seat to the ingredients for the mixture.

To freeze the ices, cooks put the snow or ice in a tub along with the salt. Then they mixed the ingredients for the ice or ice cream together, put the mixture in a smaller container called a sorbètiere, covered it, and put it in the tub. After letting it sit for half an hour or so, they opened the container and stirred the contents. They had to be careful not to let any ice or salt get into the sorbètiere. They repeated the process a couple of times, until the sorbet was frozen. Stirring ensured that the sorbet would be light and snowy, rather than hard and icy.

Fast forward to 2006. I was in Sardinia at a parade for the island’s patron saint, Saint Efisio. As always at parades everywhere, there were lots of vendors selling souvenirs and snacks. I saw a stand where lemon sorbet was being sold, so I rushed right over.

To my surprise, a young man was sitting next to a truck making the sorbet in old-fashioned sorbètieres. Not cranked ice cream makers. Not electric ice cream makers. Sorbètieres.

He poured the lemon mixture into the sorbètiere and put it in a tub filled with ice and salt. Then he turned the sorbetière with one hand and stirred the contents briskly with the other. It took him just a few minutes. As soon as the ice was ready, he handed it off to the people running the stand. They dished it out into small paper cups, with spoon/straws, and served them to the customers.

The sorbet was delectable, tart and refreshing. It was firm enough to eat with a spoon at first, then to drink through the straw as it melted in the summer’s heat.

It was a 21st century treat made the same way it was made in the 17th century.

 Lemon Sorbet

Here’s my lemon sorbet recipe. Make it in your contemporary ice cream freezer or in an old-fashioned sorbètiere. Make it whenever life hands you some nice, fat, juicy lemons.

2 cups water
2 cups of sugar
Lemon peel
1 cup of fresh-squeezed lemon juice (3-4 lemons)
2 tablespoons plain or lemon-flavored vodka

Make a simple syrup by heating the sugar and water together in a saucepan, stirring until the sugar is completely dissolved.

Take the mixture off the heat and add the peel from the lemons. Let them steep until the mixture cools.

Stir in the lemon juice. Chill, preferably overnight.

Strain the mixture. Stir in the vodka. Pour the mixture into your ice ceam maker and freeze according to manufacturer’s directions.

It’s nice to serve garnished with a sprig of fresh mint.

Makes one quart.

Fish Tales, Food Frauds, and Peddlers' Ploys

 

 Silver or Coho salmon, adult male. In: "The Fishes of Alaska." Bulletin of the Bureau of Fisheries, Vol. XXVI, 1906.

I've been hearing a lot about food frauds and fakery lately. It seems we do not always get what we
pay for.

For example, farmed salmon is being passed off as wild. Wild salmon gets its red color from the plankton it eats. Farmed salmon has color added to its feed so it looks more like wild. Some unscrupulous dealers label dyed farmed salmon as wild, and charge accordingly.

Another scam involves olive oil. You may be paying high prices for cold-pressed, extra-virgin olive oil from Italy but actually getting cheap industrially produced soybean oil.

Maple syrup may be sugar syrup with flavoring added. If the price seems too good to be true, be suspicious.

Food fraud is a terrible thing, but it’s not exactly new. In the 17th century, French confectioner M. Emy warned that dealers soaked old, dried-up vanilla beans in oil to sell them as fresh ones. The old beans didn’t pass the sniff test, according to Emy.

Street vendors in mid-19th-century London were accused, often rightly so, of all sorts of bad behavior. In their own defense, the vendors claimed that it was such a difficult way to make a living that they had to cheat to survive. 

One common ploy was using containers with false or extra thick bottoms. What seemed to be a quart container held a pint and a half. A pint container held three-quarters of a pint. The price, of course, was for the full amount.

“Topping off” meant arranging lovely fresh apples or cherries or strawberries atop a basket full of overripe fruits and lots of leaves. The practice was so typical, it was taken for granted.

Some scams were quite ingenious. Eel, which was sold either already cooked or while it was still alive, was very popular in London at the time. Unscrupulous eel sellers were known for their practice of dumping as many as 20 pounds of dead eels amid five pounds of squirming live ones, and selling them all as “large live eels.” Since they got the dead eels free from wholesalers, the profit was excellent. 

Spices were subject to all sorts of fakery. It was safer to buy whole spices than ground ones, but it was no guarantee. Some dealers made false nutmegs from clay and scrapings of real nutmeg. They also mixed clay with oil and cayenne to make realistic-looking peppercorns.

They “sophisticated” or, less euphemistically, adulterated expensive ground spices with all sorts of cheap fillers. Ginger was cut with pea flour, turmeric, wheat flour, potato flour, or mustard husks.

Coffee was extended with roasted wheat, scorched peas, beans, roasted carrots, rye, roots, acorns, or even mahogany sawdust. New tea leaves were often mixed with other leaves to make them go further. Used tea leaves were dried out and resold as fresh.

The list goes on and now, as then, buyers must always beware. So, if you think something’s fishy, it very likely is.

 

Potted Salmon

Leftover salmon, wild or farmed, makes a wonderful, 18th century British dish. If you want it to be very smooth, use a blender or food processor instead of a mortar and pestle. Serve it as an appetizer with crackers or melba toast.

When you have any cold salmon left, take the skin off and bone it, then put it in a marble mortar with a good deal of clarified butter. Season it pretty high with pepper, mace and salt, shred a little fennel very small. Beat them all together exceeding fine, then put it close down into a pot and cover with clarified butter. –The Experienced English Housekeeper, Elizabeth Raffald, 1769.

Little Women and a Short Tale of Blancmange

 
 

I saw the word blancmange for the first time when I read Little Women, Louisa May Alcott’s novel about Meg, Jo, Beth, and Amy March.

In the story, Jo went to visit her neighbor Laurie, who was ill. Since her own cooking left a lot to be desired, she brought him blancmange made by Meg. Laurie declared it “too pretty to eat,” surrounded as it was by “a garland of green leaves and the scarlet flowers of Amy’s pet geranium.” But Jo insisted, saying it was so soft it would “slip down without hurting your sore throat.”

I had no idea what blancmange meant, so I looked it up in a dictionary. It was pudding. Pudding. That was a letdown. I promptly forgot about blancmange.

Years later, when I began studying food history, I learned that there was much more to blancmange.

For one thing, the word is sometimes used metaphorically. Trembling like blancmange has much the same meaning as quaking like Jell-O^TM. A speech like blancmange is bland and possibly cloying.  But it was the dish, not the imagery, that interested me.

I learned that blancmange dates back to at least the 14th century, when Chaucer mentioned it. As its name suggests, it is a white dish. (Blanc is French for white and manger means to eat.) Originally it was made with finely minced chicken or capon flesh combined with cream, milk, or almond milk along with rice and sugar. Dried haddock or other fish or veal sometimes took the place of the chicken. Blancmange was often served decorated with colored seeds or blanched almonds or sprinkled with sugar.

In the 17th century, the French began making it with calves’ feet or hartshorn (the antler of a hart or stag), so it would jell and could be molded. Subsequently, cooks used isinglass (an early form of gelatin), seaweed or sea moss, gelatin, arrowroot or cornstarch. 

Blancmange was making its way to the dessert course.

Hannah Glasse wrote in the 18th century that it “makes a fine side dish. You may eat it with cream, wine, or what you please. Lay round it baked pears. It both looks very pretty, and eats fine.”

By the 19th century, when Alcott wrote Little Women, the capons and haddocks were long gone.    Blancmange had become a sweet molded dessert and was often associated with the sickroom.

Louisa May Alcott’s mother, Abigail, had a recipe for blancmange in her collection. She’d clipped it from a newspaper but, unfortunately, the clipping did not include the paper’s name. The recipe doesn’t specify an amount of sugar. I used half a cup, which is not overly sweet. If you like a truly sweet dish, add more.

To pay homage to Little Women, serve it garlanded with greens and, if you have them, scarlet geraniums.

Arrowroot blancmange

Take two tablespoonfuls of arrowroot to one quart of milk and a pinch of salt. Scald the milk, sweeten it and then stir in the arrowroot, which must first be wet with some milk. Let it boil once. Orange water, rose water, or lemon peel can be used to flavor it. Pour it into molds to cool. – From Abigail Alcott’s “Receipts and simple remedies,” 1854.

Of Sugar and Snow

 
Latest review

From Booklist, the magazine the New York Times calls "an acquisitions bible for public and school librarians nationwide," the review journal of the American Library Association. It recommends works of fiction, nonfiction, children's books, reference books, and media to its 30,000 institutional and personal subscribers. In-house editors and contributing reviewers from around the country review more than 7,500 books each year, most before publication.

"Before Quinzio can authoritatively address ice cream’s history, she must first debunk a number of widespread myths. Neither Nero nor Marco Polo nor Catherine de Medici nor England’s Charles I had anything to do with introducing ice cream to Europe. Ice cream’s history began when sixteenth-century Europeans discovered the freezing effects of mixing ice with salt and applied it first to wine. Although medical opinion of the time disapproved, the technique caught on and spread across the continent. By the seventeenth century, recipes for “icy creams” appeared in England. Americans took to ice cream with a vengeance, and the invention of mechanical refrigeration made the treat available to everyone at any time. Quinzio masterfully documents ice cream’s modern evolution from junket tablets for the home icebox through the vast array of flavors offered by industrial ice-cream production. Another excellent contribution to the California Studies in Food and Culture series."

Chop Suey and Other Saturday Night Sundaes

 

Saturday Night

It’s Saturday night and I like your new hat;
I’m ready to pop with emotion and that;
I’m fizzy and fiery and fruity and tense,
So let’s have a sundae and hang the expense!

Strawberry sundae image from wikipedia.org. USDA photo by: Ken Hammond

When Alan Patrick Herbert wrote those lines in 1932, soda fountains reigned and sundaes ruled.  At the time, the sundae, also known as the sundi, college ice, college soda, or throwover (so called because syrups, fruits, and sauces were thrown over scoops of ice cream) cost 15 to 20 cents. So, on a Saturday night, some could hang the expense and splurge on a sundae despite the Depression.

Soda jerks made sundaes with ice creams, fruits, whipped cream, marshmallow, nuts, and all sorts of syrups and sauces –  coffee, butterscotch, strawberry, pineapple, cherry, raspberry. Both cold and hot fudge sauces were popular. But hot fudge was generally reserved for winter. 

Sundaes were flavored with imagination and named with flair. There was a “Bachelor” sundae, a “Boston Club,” a “Delmonico,” a “Merry Widow,” a  “Bees Knees,” a “Lucky Lindy,” a “Tutti Frutti Temptation,” an “Easter Sundae,” and more.

The “Princess Pat” celebrated St. Patrick’s day with vanilla and strawberry ice creams, orange ice, crème de menthe syrup, almonds, whipped cream, and a cherry. 

The “Washington Sundae” commemorated the birthday of America’s first president with French vanilla ice cream, maraschino cherries, whipped cream, and pecans. It was topped with a mini-hatchet.

A tiny American flag decorated the “Betsy Ross” sundae. It featured three scoops of vanilla ice cream with crushed strawberries poured over one, crushed pineapple atop another and, over the third, a ladleful of blue-tinted marshmallow.

Yellow-tinted marshmallow topped a “Setting Sun Tulip” sundae. Its colorful ingredients included raspberry and orange ices, raspberries, and orange slices.

A “Coney Island” sundae paid tribute to New York’s famed amusement park with ice creams and ices piled up like a roller-coaster. They were topped with crushed raspberries, whipped cream, and a cherry.

A “Reducing Diet” sundae, made with unsweetened fresh fruit and just a taste of ice cream, was neither a splurge nor a success.

But the “Aviation Glide” was both. Banana halves flanked a scoop each of chocolate, vanilla, and strawberry ice creams. Nabisco wafers represented the wings and tail of the plane. A cherry atop the chocolate scoop played the role of the pilot. Crushed cherries, pineapple, pecans, and whipped cream completed the creation. A big hit with university students, it was definitely a 20 cent sundae.

The “Peach Melba” sundae may have been a tribute to Escoffier’s “Pêche Melba.”  But instead of his ice cream, poached peach, and raspberry syrup combination, it consisted of a peach half topped with ice cream, strawberry syrup, coconut, whipped cream, and a cherry. It wasn’t served in a swan carved from ice either.  (For more on Escoffier, go to: http://www.travellady.com/Articles/article-visitingescoffier.html .)

The “Chop Suey” sundae was an odd one. Like chop suey itself, it had no connection to Chinese cuisine or culture. I think the name simply indicated a mishmash.

When I made it, it was lumpy. So after cooking the dates and figs, I let the mixture cool a bit, then pureed it in a food processor. I folded in the walnuts after that. Not only is it tasty on ice cream, but it’s good with goat cheese.

It’s worth the splurge – in calories.

Chop Suey Sundae

Take one-half pound of chopped figs and one-half pound of dates. Remove the stem of the figs and the seed from the dates. Put these into two quarts of water and cook into a jelly. While this is cooking chop or pulverize in a mortar one pound of English walnut meat. Add this to the above and cook until a good syrup is formed. Thin this to suit taste. Keep a small amount in a bowl for dispensing, putting the balance in a jar and keeping on the ice.  – The  Spatula Soda Water Guide and Book of Formulas for Soda Water Dispensers, 1901.

 
 

Espresso Granita -- No Ice Cream Machine Required

My mother used to say, “A poor cook blames her utensils.” As usual – in retrospect – she was right. Chances are, it wasn’t the cookie sheet’s fault that the cookies burned.

The corollary to her adage is that too often we think that without a particular whatsis, we can’t make whatever, so we give up before we start. Or we buy elaborate equipment. We buy bread machines and rice cookers and ice cream makers because we think we can’t make bread or rice or ice cream without them.  But, of course, we can.

I went shopping for an ice cream maker several years ago. I was starting to write a book about ice cream, so I needed to make lots of it. I wanted something simple and sturdy and not too expensive. I discovered that ice cream makers range from a $20 ball kids toss back and forth as a way of churning the ice cream to sophisticated machines that make ice cream at the touch of a button and cost in excess of $500.

I knew tossing the ball wouldn’t do the job for me. But I couldn’t justify the cost of the high-end machine. So I bought an electric ice cream maker that cost about $40. Unlike its $500 counterpart, its container has to be frozen overnight before it can be used. But that’s not a problem. I just keep it in the freezer all the time. There’s usually a bag of frozen peas in it to save space.

It works just fine. Because the secret of good ice cream isn’t the utensil. It’s the cream, the milk, the spices, the nuts, the fruits, the flavorings, and the way the cook combines them all that make the difference. It’s the ingredients and the cook. Not whether the ice cream was churned in a Brand X or a Brand Z machine. And yet, people always ask me what brand I use. As if that is key to great ice cream.

Actually, I learned that lots of traditional and quite wonderful frozen desserts don’t require any ice cream maker at all. Semifreddo, spumone, frozen mousse, frozen parfait, biscuit Tortoni, granita – they’re all made without one. And they’re all terrific. 

This espresso granita is simple to make and sure to impress guests. Yet it doesn’t require any expensive utensils. My mother would have approved.

Espresso granita

Espresso granita is traditional and very versatile. Serve it in cups and top with softly whipped cream. Or alternate layers of espresso granita and whipped cream in tall glasses. It’s also very nice served with coffee, hazelnut or almond-flavored liqueur poured over it.

Two 8-ounce cups of brewed espresso or strong coffee
(Use decaf if coffee keeps you awake and you plan to serve this after dinner.)
1/4 cup sugar
A slice of lemon peel

Brew the coffee. If you have an espresso maker, use it. If not, just brew according to your usual method but make it a little stronger than you ordinarily would. Stir in sugar to dissolve. Taste and add more sugar if necessary. Add lemon peel. Let the mixture cool, then strain it.

Pour the coffee into a shallow pan, large enough so the liquid isn’t more than an inch deep. An 8-inch square pan works well. Freeze until it’s icy around the edges. Then, using a fork, scrape the icy crystals from the edges of the pan breaking them up into the smallest possible grains. Repeat every half hour or so until the entire mixture consists of small grains of frozen coffee. Serve or store in a plastic container in your freezer.

Just before you serve it, fluff up the grains with a fork again. It’s best to make this on the same day you plan to serve it, but it will keep for another day or so. Serves four.