Old-time Chocolate and Fruit Ice Cream Recipes

15-year-old Helena Muffly wrote exactly 100 years ago today:

Sunday, February 26, 1911: I went to Sunday school this afternoon and staid for church and catechize. The walking was extremely bad, but still I went. We had chocolate ice cream for supper. We all rather like it, so we have it occasionally which is about once in a week.

Her middle-aged granddaughter’s comments 100 years later:

I’m amazing how often the Muffly family had ice cream. This is the fifth time they’ve made it since the diary began on January 1–ice cream was previously mentioned on January 22, February 8 (and it was banana ice cream on the 8th! I’m amazed that bananas were available in rural Pennsylvania), February 12, and February 23.

A century ago ice cream freezers were the new-fangled thing—and with the ready availability of ice during the winter months, ice cream made the perfect dainty winter dessert. (A hundred years ago, young people preferred lighter foods which they called dainty foods.)

I found directions for making ice cream in an old cookbook that was published in 1911.

Chocolate Ice Cream—Use the vanilla recipe, adding four ounces of grated chocolate to the milk before scalding and using a couple ounces more sugar than for the vanilla cream.

Vanilla Ice Cream—Add to one egg slightly beaten one sup of sugar, one tablespoon of flour, and a speck of salt. Pour on one pint of scalding milk and cook for twenty-five minutes in a double boiler. When cool, add vanilla and one pint of thin cream.

Fresh Fruit Ice Creams—Prepare fruit by sprinkling sugar. Let it stand one hour, press through a sieve, and stir into ice cream when the cream is frozen to a mush. All fruit ice creams are made in substantially the same way, but where seed fruits, such as currants, are used, the carefully strained juice only must be added. This can be put in the freezer with the cream and not reserved until later, as in the case of the mashed fruits. Grated pineapple, with the addition of a little lemon juice, makes a particularly fine fruit cream.

The Butterick Cook Book (1911)

For detailed directions from the 1911 cookbook see the Vanilla Ice Cream posting.

Old-time Vanilla Ice Cream Recipes

15-year-old Helena wrote a hundred years ago today:

Sunday, February 12, 1911. Pa and Ma went away today and we had the house to ourselves while they were gone. Of course we had a fine dinner for my sister is an excellent cook, or rather she thinks she is. Any way we had dinner. Ice cream consisted of part of it. I had to turn the freezer, which I soon tired of. (I usually tire of anything I don’t like.) Any how I froze that cream so hard that it all crumbled up in big chunks. That surely was a result of labor. Rachel Oakes was a guest for dinner. I went to Sunday school church and catechize this afternoon. By the time I got home, the afternoon was almost over.

Her middle-aged granddaughter’s comments 100 years later:

I found directions for making ice cream in an old cookbook that was published in 1911.

Vanilla Ice Cream, No. 1—Sweeten one quart of thin cream with three-fourths cup of sugar, flavor with one and one-half tablespoons of vanilla extract and freeze.

Vanilla Ice Cream, No. 2—Add to one egg slightly beaten, one cup of sugar, one tablespoon of flour, and a speck of salt. Pour on one pint of scalding milk and cook for twenty-five minutes in a double boiler. When cool, add vanilla and one pint of thin cream.

In freezing cream and ices, good general rules to be observed are: Be lavish with the salt and have the ice pounded quite fine, thereby involving less labor in turning the freezer and securing a smooth velvety cream. The quickest and best way to pound the ice is to put it in a stout burlap bag, tie up the mouth, and pound it vigorously with a flat-headed hammer or mallet. Snow may be used instead of ice; if this does not freeze steadily, add one cup of water to it. Have the ice and salt already packed around the can before the mixture is put in. Be sure that the latter is quite cold before it is placed in the can and do not begin freezing by turning rapidly and lagging toward the end of the process. Instead turn slowly at the beginning and increase the speed as the mixture thickens. Be very careful that there is no possible chance of the salt or water getting into the can, but do not pour off the water unless it gets too high; when a little may be turned off.

Allow three measures of ice to one measure of salt; if a larger proportionate quantity of salt be used the freezing will take place in a shorter time, but the mixture will have a granular texture.

Never fill a freezer more than three-fourths full, as the mixture gains in bulk as it freezes.

When it is desired to have the cream in blocks or cakes a special mold will be needed. The mold should be set in ice and salt while the cream is being frozen, and when the beater or mixer is removed, the cream should be packed into the mold as quickly as possible. It should be pressed down firmly and smoothly and a piece of stout muslin or buttered paper laid over it before the mold cover is put on. The mold is then packed in ice and salt and kept for a few hours until the cream is ready for use.

The Butterick Cook Book (1911)

Based upon the directions above, it appears that Grandma probably started turning the handle quickly at the beginning and then much slower as it thickened—which is exactly the opposite from what she should have done.

(An old-fashioned ice cream freezer is shown in the January 22 posting.)

A Rotten Apple Spoils the Barrel

15-year-old Helena wrote a hundred years ago today:

Saturday, February 11, 1911. Got up about eight o’clock this morning. Did quite a lot of work this forenoon. Carrie Stout was over a while this afternoon. Nearly all my Saturdays are alike.

Her middle-aged granddaughter’s comments 100 years later:

As I read this diary I want to constantly remind the 15-year-old who wrote it to write about day-to-day activities and routines. For example, I wonder what my future grandmother and her family did on Saturday mornings in the middle of the winter.

Maybe the family sorted through the bins of apples stored in the basement and discarded apples that were starting to spoil. If there were only small bad spots on some of the apples, they probably were put into a pan and brought up to the kitchen for immediate use.

Or maybe the family sorted potatoes—and selected the damaged or spouted ones to eat first. If there were lots of spouting potatoes the sprouts would have been broken off and then put back into storage. Back then carefully curing, storing, and spouting extended the storage life–whereas today potatoes are often treated with chemicals to minimize sprouting.

Today we talk about local foods being freshest—but in the old days there was also a competing notion that the food that would spoil first should be used first. This particularly played out during the winter months. The practice of saving the most desirable specimens helped ensure that there would be sufficient food for the entire winter.

For example, let’s say that there were 10 winter squash put into storage. A month later someone went to get a squash and noticed that one had a small bad spot on it—whereas the one sitting next to it still looked as perfect as the day it was harvested. The one with the imperfections would be selected—and the bad spot would be cut out of it before using—because that one won’t last as long into the winter as the perfect one.

That said, a hundred years ago people also weren’t afraid to throw out food if it did spoil. More food would be put into storage than could possibly be eaten and it was anticipated that a certain percentage of it would spoil.

I have a friend who won’t shop at farmers’ markets because the bunches, trays, and baskets of produce sold at them provide more produce than her family can eat before it spoils. I always tell her to enjoy the fresh food—and not to worry if she ends up throwing some away—but the waste bothers her and she’d prefer to buy processed foods and supermarket produce that are less likely to decay.

That said— in Grandma’s day meals were planned to use available foods and whenever possible food was used—or given to a neighbor who could use it.

Buckwheat Pancakes (Griddle Cakes)

15-year-old Helena wrote a hundred years ago today:

Monday, January 23, 1911. Here’s Monday, another school day. It’s so hard to get up awful early, when you feel nice and sleepy.

Her middle-aged grand-daughter’s comments 100 years later:

Sometimes I wish that Grandma provided more detail when she wrote. For example, I wonder what Grandma ate for breakfast. I imagine that it was similar to what I ate two generations later when I was growing up on another farm near McEwensville—but I might be totally wrong.

Buckwheat Griddle Cakes with Current Conserve

In January we generally ate pancakes (griddle cakes) for breakfast. We often ate pancakes made from a mix, but occasionally had the more traditional buckwheat griddle cakes that I envision would have been eaten when Grandma was young. After the pancakes were cooked I’d put maple syrup or jam on mine—but my father always put old-fashioned liverwurst on his. We only had pancakes when liverwurst was available, and that was only during the winter months when my family or a neighbor butchered a hog.

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I love to go to flea markets in central Pennsylvania with my father—

One find was a promotional cookbook published by KC Baking Powder in 1911 that contains a recipe for Buckwheat Griddle Cakes. I decided to make the recipe to see if they were like the buckwheat cakes I remembered.

KC Buckwheat Griddle Cakes

1 cup buckwheat flour

1 tablespoonful sugar

3 level teaspoons baking powder

1 ¼ cups cold water

1/3 teaspoonsful salt

Sift together, three times, the flour, sugar, salt, and baking powder*; stir the water in all at once and bake immediately on a hot well-oiled griddle. Buckwheat flour calls for a generous measure of baking powder. Part milk may be used to mix the cakes but water give quite as good results.

The Cook’s Book: KC Baking Powder (1911)

*I just stirred the ingredients together and didn’t sift anything. I’m not sure why old-time cookbook authors were obsessed with sifting.

I was surprised how few ingredients there were, but from looking through the cookbook I realized that most recipes a hundred years ago had very few ingredients. I guess that since people cooked from scratch every day that they gravitated toward simple recipes.

After I’d cooked the griddle cakes—I poured some maple syrup on them and took a bite. They were very good though the robust taste of the buckwheat was a prominent undertone.

I then remembered that I had a jar of homemade current conserve that a friend of my daughter’s had given me. (An aside–I think that it’s really cool how some young people care enough about what they eat to revive traditional cooking and food preservation). I spooned a little conserve on the griddle cakes and took a bite—and the taste was awesome. The tartness of the conserve wonderfully complemented the robustness of the griddle cakes—and I almost felt like I had drifted back to Grandma’s day.