In 1984, President Ronald Reagan designated July as National Ice Cream Month and the third Sunday of the month as National Ice Cream Day. The proclamation called for all people of the United States to observe these events with “appropriate ceremonies and activities.” So let’s celebrate with some Regency era chocolate ice cream.

Of the three luxury beverages of the Regency era, tea dominates the conversation, but coffee and chocolate were regularly enjoyed by many in the higher classes. Chocolate was typically served at breakfast, although specialty coffee and chocolate houses served it at all times during the day.

Recipes for ices, ice creams, custards and various pastries and tarts abounded in English cookery books. Generally they began with a block of chocolate (usually used to make drinking chocolate) prepared from cocoa nibs.

Chocolate Tablets

It is easy to imagine these chocolate blocks were like the chocolate we buy today, but it would not be accurate. They included a variety of ingredients we do not expect in anything but specialty chocolate today.

Hannah Glasse (1774) offered two recipes for preparing the nibs into chocolate tablets for use. The amount of spices added to both of these recipes are a bit mind boggling.

How to make Chocolate.

TAKE fix pounds of cocoa-nuts, one pound of anise-seeds, four ounces of long-pepper, one of cinnamon, a quarter of a pound of almonds, one pound of pistachios, as much achiote as will make it the colour of brick, three grains of musk, and as much amber-grease (ambergris from a sperm whale’s digestive track), six pounds of loaf-sugar, one ounce of nutmegs, dry and beat them, and force them through a fine sieve; your almonds must be beat to a paste, and mixed with the other ingredients;

Then dip your sugar in orange-flower or rose-water, (the sugar would be broken off a large loaf and would be a solid chunk able to be dipped in water) and put it in a skillet, on a very gentle charcoal fire; then put in the spice, and stew it well together, then the musk and amber-grease, then put in the cocoa-nuts last of all then achiote, wetting it with the water the sugar was dipped in.

Stew all these very well together over a hotter fire than before; then take it up, and put it into boxes, or what form you like and set it to dry in a warm place.  

Another Way to make Chocolate.

TAKE fix pounds of the best Spanish nuts, when parched, and cleaned, from the hulls, take three pounds of sugar, two ounces of the best cinnamon, beaten and sifted very fine; to every two pound of nuts put in three good vanelas, or more or less as you please; to every pound of nuts half a drachm of cardamom-seeds, very finely beaten and sieved.

Not surprisingly, most people preferred to purchase these tablets in a ready-made form. Manufactures blended various flavorings into the chocolate tablets like Glasse recommended. Popular flavorings included mace, ambergris, aniseed, cloves, cardamon, bergamot, lemon peel, vanilla, cinnamon, nutmeg, orange-flower water, and rose water.  During the Regency, the later five were the most popular. Before you begin imagining these as luxury chocolate bars, they weren’t. Without modern production machinery, the chocolate tablets were hard and gritty, not sweet, smooth and melty. A few people ate them straight as a type of candy, but most believed they would cause indigestion if eaten in that form. 

English Chocolate Ice Cream

These recipes from English cookbooks all begin with prepared chocolate tablets which are melted into water or cream. The spices included in the chocolate tablets could dramatically change the flavor of the ice cream from one batch to the next.

The first published English chocolate ice cream recipe features a startling lack of sugar:

To make Chocolate-cream

TAKE a Quarter of a Pound of Chocolate, breaking it into a Quarter of a Pint of boiling Water.  Mill it (beat it with a tool called a molinilla or chocolate mill, designed to raise a froth) and boil it, ’till all the Chocolate is dissolv’d. Then put to it a Pint of Cream and two Eggs well-beaten; let it boil, milling it all the while; when it is cold, mill it again, that it may go up with a Froth.

[Eales’ instructions on how to freeze any sort of cream you want can be found in the next chapter.] (Eales, 1718)

This recipe from Borella illustrates the risk of making curds and whey out of your ice cream preparation if you don’t pay close attention to it. Mmmm, chocolate curds and whey …

Chocolate Cream Ices.

TAKE chocolate, melt it over the fire in a small pan ; when melted, you pour it into that where you are to make your cream ; break into the same pan four yolks of eggs for every pint of cream you are to employ; mix the whole together, add some pounded loaf sugar to it, keeping stirring continually, then add your cream by little and little, in stirring and turning till the whole is mixed properly together.

Then set your pan over the fire, and keep stirring with a wooden spoon till you see your composition is willing to boil, when you are to take it off immediately; for from the moment you set your composition over the fire till that it offers to boil, it has a sufficient time to incorporate well and thicken sufficiently, without need of boiling ; and should you let it boil, you would run the risk to make your cream turn into whey, on account of the yolks of eggs, which would do too much.

Take great care likewise your cream should be very fresh and sweet, for, otherwise, as soon as it would feel the warmth it would all turn into curds and whey; therefore, for all these considerations, you are to take care to stir it well and continually, from the moment you set it on the fire to that you take it off; after which you pour it into a sieve to pass it in a pan, then put it in the sabotiere to make it congeal after the usual manner. (Borella, 1772)

Nutt offers a recipe that appears to be both sweet and without the cottage cheese risks.

Chocolate Ice Cream.

TAKE one ounce and a half of chocolate and warm it over the fire; take six eggs, one gill of syrup (sugar and water syrup called simple syrup today), and one pint of cream; put it over the fire till it begins to thicken ; mix the chocolate in, pass it through a sieve and freeze it. (Nutt, 1807)

A French Approach

Apparently Emy, a French chef, took an entirely different approach to making his chocolate cream. Instead of starting with a chocolate tablet, he began with roasted cocoa nibs that he steeped in hot cream and sugar like one would do with ground coffee beans. Both the following recipes would be light in color, and with a very different sort of chocolate flavor that the prior English recipes. It is also worth noting that these recipe lacks the heavy spices that were typically found in English chocolate tablets.

Cacao Ice Cream

For a pint of double cream, you need two ounces of roasted cacao.  Beat two egg whites with powdered sugar until they make a clear paste.  Add a pint of double cream and thicken over low heat, stirring, and avoiding boiling.  Follow this article fully and don’t let any of the cream stick to the pot.  Taste it to see if there is enough sugar.  When it is thick, separated from the watery part, take it off the fire.  Break up the cacao (roasted like coffee, shell removed), mix with the hot cream, and cover tightly in a double boiler over hot water (no additional heat) for an hour and a half to two hours.  Strain through silk and allow to cool. Freeze as per general method. (Emy, 1768. Translation by David Young)

This recipe by Emy resembles Glasse’s second recipe for chocolate tablets with vanilla, cinnamon and ambergris. (What is does not resemble, though, is modern white chocolate.)

White Chocolate Ice Cream

Using the recipe for Cacao Ice Cream [above], but before heating, add:  half a dash of amber (ambergris) half a stick of vanilla, and two dashes of cinnamon.   (Emy, 1768. Translation by David Young)

Find Ice Cream References Here

Read More about Regency Ice Cream Here

Read More about Regency Food and Drink Here

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