Historic Ice Cream Recipes

Get inspired with these yummy ice cream recipes for those hot summer days!

By Liz Dommasch, County Archivist

I scream, you scream, we all scream for ice cream! What could be better on a hot summer day than a nice cold ice cream treat? I’ve combed through our collection of cookbooks at the Archives, and thought I’d share some of my favourite historic ice cream recipes:

Ice Cream
Two quarts good cream, one pint milk, fourteen ounces white sugar, two eggs; beat the eggs and sugar together as for cake, before mixing with the cream; flavor to taste; place the can in the freezer, and put in alternate layers of pounded ice and salt – use plenty of salt, to make the cream freeze quickly. Stir constantly and rapidly as it begins to freeze, that it may be perfectly smooth, and slower as it stiffens. As the ice melts draw off the water and full up with fresh layers.
W.A. Karn’s Drug Store. The Art of Cooking Made Easy. Woodstock, Ontario, ca. 1910

Two little boys riding a pony in front of an unidentified hydro station. One little boy is offering an ice cream cone to the man holding the pony still. Circa the 1940s. [COA123 9-37]

Brown Bread Ice Cream
3 quarts cream, 1 ¼ cups dried brown bread crumbs, 7/8 cup sugar, ¼ teaspoon salt. Soak crumbs in 1 quart cream. Let stand 15 minutes. Rub through sieve, add sugar, salt and remaining cream, then freeze.
St. Mary’s Church. Woodstock Cook Book. – 1917.

Macaroon Ice Cream
1 quart cream, 1 cup macaroons, ¾ cup sugar, 1 tablespoon vanilla. Dry pound and measure macaroon. Add to cream, sugar and vanilla and then free.
St. Mary’s Church. Woodstock Cook Book. – 1917.

Fig Ice Cream
3 cups milk
1 cup sugar
Yolks 5 eggs
1 teaspoon salt
1 lb. figs, finely chopped
1 ½ cups heavy cream
Whites 5 eggs
1 tablespoon vanilla
2 tablespoons brandy

Make custard of yolks of eggs, sugar, and milk; strain, add figs, cool and flavor. Add whites of eggs beaten until stiff and heavy, cream beaten until stiff; freeze and mould.
The Boston Cooking School Cook Book. – 1924.

An advertisement for the Maple Dairy Company, Ltd. formerly located at 715-717 Dundas Street in Woodstock, Ontario. Printed in a Woodstock City Directory.

New York Ice Cream
2 cups milk, 3 cups cream, 1 cup sugar, pinch salt, 4 egg yolks, 1 TS gelatin, 1 TBS vanilla. Make a custard of milk, sugar, eggs, salt and heat to boil. Remove from fire, add gelatin melted in warm water, cool, strain, flavor. Add the whipped cream, cool, then freeze.
Ireland, Brenda. Cates and Candles: A sampler of early recipes and remedies. – 1990.

Lemon Milk Sherbet
1 quart milk, 2 cups sugar, juice of 3 lemons. Dissolve sugar with milk; add lemon juice slowly, freeze.
Ireland, Brenda. Cates and Candles: A sampler of early recipes and remedies. – 1990.

Note: Throughout the 1800s and the first decades of the 1900s, homemade ice cream was made with manual devices consisting of a hollow interspace around a main container, the former filled with ice and salt and the latter with the mix to be frozen, with a manual handle turned to operate some kind of stirring or mixing system so that the mix would freeze homogeneously.

An advertisement for Dairy Queen's "Sweet Sixteen Sale" printed in Life Magazine, 11 June 1956.