Behind the Recipe -- Jeri Quinzio

Marshmallow's Rocky Road

 

After years in the culinary wilderness, marshmallows are having another moment. I hope this one doesn’t become as over-the-top as the last one.
 
Marshmallows started out as medicines. They were made from the marshmallow plant root, which was thought to cure coughs and colds. In the 18th century, European confectioners blended egg whites and sugar with the sticky sap and made
marshmallow confections. 

As marshmallows evolved from treatments to treats, the plant that gave them their name was abandoned because of its unpleasant taste. It was all right for cough medicine, but not for sweets. Gum Arabic and then gelatin stood in for marshmallow. Eventually, even the egg whites became superfluous. By the 20th century, they were being made with gelatin, water, sugar, and/or corn syrup. Marshmallows were lighter, sweeter, and fluffier than their predecessors.
 
When marshmallows became available commercially, home cooks were only too happy to buy rather than make them. In the 1930s and ‘40s, all sorts of marshmallow dishes emerged. During World War II, marshmallows were a popular ingredient because they added sweetness to dishes without using rationed sugar. Cooks melted marshmallows into cake fillings and frostings, mixed them into ice creams, cut them up (before mini-marshmallows debuted) and stirred them into gelatins and even salads.

They made tea sandwiches from small circles of bread topped with marshmallow cream, walnuts, raisins, and maraschino cherries. Their “Scotch Kisses” (marshmallows coated with sugar syrup) are unfair to both Scotch and kisses.

I think the worst offender is the infamous sweet potato casserole. Topping sweet potatoes with marshmallows and serving the dish on an already overburdened Thanksgiving table was and remains a bad idea.

These days, chefs, bakers, and home cooks alike are whipping up fresh marshmallows and flavoring them with pumpkin, coffee, coconut, chocolate, you name it. They’re creating S’mores with home-made graham crackers, high-end chocolate, and made-from-scratch marshmallows. So far, no one’s making marshmallow tea sandwiches.

I think the one old-time marshmallow recipe that truly deserves a resurgence is rocky road ice cream. Whether you make it with the finest chocolate and home-made marshmallows or use regular grocery store ingredients, it’s a terrific ice cream.

Eat it quick. Before it melts!
 

Oddly enough, it was born during the Depression, not wartime. It was developed in 1929 by William Dreyer, founder of Dreyer's Grand Ice Cream. He cut up some marshmallows with his wife's sewing shears and stirred them into chocolate ice cream along with some walnuts. The name was said to have been a wry comment on the economic times. It's only too appropriate today as well.

Rocky Road Ice Cream

1 1/2 cups whole milk
1 1/2 cups heavy cream
6 ounces bittersweet or semisweet chocolate
1/2 cup sugar
4 egg yolks
Pinch of salt
1/4 cup toasted, chopped walnuts
1/4 cup mini-marshmallows
2 ounces bittersweet or semisweet chocolate, chopped
 
Combine milk and cream in a saucepan over low heat. Add 6 ounces of chocolate and stir until it’s melted. 

Half fill a large bowl with ice or ice water and set aside.

In another saucepan, whisk the egg yolks and sugar until thick and pale. Stir a small amount of the chocolate cream into the eggs, then gradually stir in the rest.

When it’s all incorporated, place pan over low heat and cook, stirring gently, until it thickens enough to coat a spoon. Don’t let it come to a boil. Pour into a clean bowl and set it in the ice bowl. Stir occasionally until it cools. Cover with plastic wrap pressed against the surface so it doesn’t form a skin on top. Chill.
 
Churn in your ice cream machine, following manufacturer’s instructions. Combine the walnuts, marshmallows, and chocolate pieces. When the ice cream is nearly ready, add the reserved mixture. Store in freezer until ready to serve. Makes one quart.
 

 

Malted-Milk Ice Cream

 

In the 1940s, bobby-soxers went to malt shops and lingered over malted milk shakes.

Translation:

In the 1940s, teen-agers went to soda fountains (shops that sold ice cream sodas, sundaes, and soft drinks) and lingered over drinks made with milk, a flavoring such as chocolate syrup, a scoop of ice cream, and malted-milk powder.

Malted-milk powder is a mixture of whole dried milk, malted barley, and wheat flour. It has a slightly sweet, toasty flavor. Invented in 1887 by William Horlick of Wisconsin, originally it was dissolved in hot water and given to babies or people with digestive problems as a nutritional supplement.

Soon soda fountain operators began adding it to milk shakes, serving them hot in winter and cold in summer. Malted milk shakes were thick, hearty, and considered healthy. They especially appealed to men, and during Prohibition malteds often substituted for beer.

Blenders, introduced in the 1920s, made richer, smoother malteds and gave soda jerks a chance to show off their style and flair. They experimented with flavors, and added eggs and/or ice cream to the drinks. One of the best-liked was the “black and white,” a chocolate malted with vanilla ice cream. It was all the rage with the bobby-soxers.

Movies of the day often featured young stars sipping malteds at soda fountains, often flirting with the soda jerk. Sometimes a young couple shared one malted with two straws, all the better to sit close to each other. Malteds were as popular then as they are forgotten today.

Malted-milk powder is still used. Added to warm milk, it makes a sweet drink young kids often like. Bakers say it gives breads and bagels better flavor and texture. The crispy malt-flavored, chocolate-covered candies called malted milk balls,  which were once a favorite movie snack, are still around. But it’s hard to find a malted-milk shake, much less a soda fountain these days.

I decided to reproduce the flavor of a malted in an ice cream. I don’t think malt shops actually served malted-milk ice cream, but it turns out to taste terrific. Bobby-soxers would have loved it.

Initially, I was going to add chopped malted-milk ball candies to the ice cream. But when I read the ingredient list on the label, I changed my mind. Too many unpronounceables. Instead I used plain milk chocolate. You can try bittersweet chocolate, but I think the milk chocolate reproduces the old-time flavor of a malted better.

My Malted Milk Ice Cream

One cup heavy cream
Two-thirds cup malted-milk powder
Two cups half and half
Four egg yolks
Half cup sugar
Pinch salt
One teaspoon vanilla
Four ounces milk chocolate, chopped

Warm cream, add malted-milk powder and stir until dissolved. Stir in the half and half and simmer.

Whisk egg yolks with sugar until light and creamy. Add a little of the cream mixture to the eggs and sugar to temper, then combine all and stir over low heat. Add salt. Continue stirring over low heat until the mixture thickens and coats the spoon.

Remove from heat and stir over an ice bath until cool. Add vanilla.

Chill. Freeze according to your ice cream machine’s directions. Just before it’s done, mix in the chocolate pieces.

Makes one quart.

 
 

Puffed Wheat and the Elite

 

When your dinner guests are the cream of early 20th century English society, everything should be perfect. But even the aristocratic Lady Agnes Jekyll knew that inevitably there would be “pauses of service in the best regulated dining-rooms, when solace is sought in crumbling or nibbling something.”

Her remedy? The cereal then said to be shot from guns. Puffed Wheat.

“A few spoonfuls of this, crisped hot in the oven and lying invitingly on small mother-o’-pearl shells, or in some such decorative and labour-saving receptacles before each guest, will comfort the shy, stem the torrent of the fluent-obvious, and generally promote a flow of that pleasant conversation…”

Lady Jekyll was a renowned hostess when the Times of London asked her to write a food and entertaining column. Later the columns were collected in a book: Kitchen Essays.

Jekyll lived in a Masterpiece Theater world, with cooks and nannies, weekends in the country, and travel abroad. She wrote about what to serve for wedding breakfasts, shooting-party luncheons, and posh dinner parties.

One chapter is titled “In the cook’s absence.” Its recipes are simple enough for the kitchen maid to manage on cook’s day off. Another, “Luncheon for a motor excursion in winter,” suggests having a picnic packed because the food at country hotels is too “dear” and too often consists of “Tough joints, bluish rabbit or pork pies, fly-haunted ham bones, black-eyed potatoes,” and such.

Her own menus feature such classics as a “leg of lamb set round with little jelly castles of mint sauce made with aspic and chopped mint,” a “Souchet of Slips,” essentially a fish soup made with tiny Dover sole, and “Claret Jelly.”

All of which makes it curious that she seemed to have such high regard for lowly cereals. Calling the familiar English breakfast fare “monotonous,” she suggests that both young and old would benefit by having “American Cereals, such as post-toasties, honey-grains, puffed wheat, or puffed rice, with or without cream.”

The cereals were relatively new then. Puffed Rice had been introduced in 1905; Puffed Wheat, shortly after. They were originally shot from guns, specifically a Spanish-American War cannon. Later, machinery took over.

Quaker Oats company advertisements of the day suggested that the cereals were perfect for breakfast, lunch, and supper. They recommended sprinkling Puffed Rice on ice cream instead of nuts. And they offered a snack suggestion: “Crisp and lightly butter – as with peanuts or pop-corn, for hungry children after school.” But not even the Quaker Oats people recommended serving the cereals at elegant dinner parties.

However, why not? Your guests will probably be delighted. And it’s sure to keep the conversation going during those inevitable pauses in service.

 

Apricot Purée (with puffed rice)

Stew 1 pound best dried apricots after an all-night soak. When cooked soft, add a small tin of peeled apricots; boil together, sweeten to taste; reduce the syrup, pass through a wire sieve, and put into a shallow glass bowl; cover completely with a thin layer of partly whipped cream (about 6d worth), and perhaps a few chopped pistachio nuts to embellish. With this send round a glass finger-bowl of that useful American cereal ‘puffed rice’ just crisped in the oven, to be sprinkled on by each guest. This sweet is suitable also for holiday luncheons or Sunday suppers. For 5-6 persons. – Kitchen Essays, Lady Jekyll, 1922.