Peach Ice Cream
Courtesy of the Library of Congress
Arden Duane’s cream pie asked for an oven and a crust. Her second peach recipe asks for something harder to come by in the summer of 1936: a hand-crank freezer, a block of ice, and rock salt to bring the temperature down. Ice cost money and melted fast, which is exactly why ice cream earned more per serving than any other dessert at a summer social. A cook who owned a freezer owned equipment, and equipment is what separates a woman who bakes for her family from a woman who runs a business out of her kitchen. Duane knew her readers ranged across both, so she wrote the method for anyone who could borrow the machine. The recipe also asks for patience. After the cream stiffens you pull the dasher, pack the canister, and let it sit three hours or longer to ripen, which deepens the flavor and firms the texture.
Peach Ice Cream
Ingredients
1 quart thin cream
2 cups sugar
3 cups crushed peaches
1 tablespoon vanilla
⅛ teaspoon salt
Directions
Mix one cup of the sugar with the cream and vanilla. Let stand ten minutes. Pour into a sterilized freezer and turn the crank until half frozen. Combine the remaining ingredients and let them stand thirty minutes, then add them to the freezer. Freeze until stiff. Remove the dasher from the cream and pack. Let stand three hours or longer to ripen.
Arden Duane, “Peach Receipes Are Given By Arden Duane,” New Journal and Guide, August 8, 1936, p. 9.
