Frozen Delight: Ice Cream to Beat the Summer Heat

Rideau’s Rearview, By CJ Rooney

Nowadays, ice cream and frozen treats are something that we take for granted. We walk to the freezer section of our local supermarket and pick up a cardboard carton of one of something like 500 flavours, that’s soggy by the time we get home. That is modern convenience, to be sure.

But it wasn’t always so. Used to be, if you wanted a cool treat you had to make it yourself. Not too hard, right? Just throw everything in the mixer and turn it on. Not so fast. First, you need ice….but you don’t have a freezer. They haven’t been invented yet. So, you go to the ice house, and hope that there is enough ice left from the year before. (We’ll cover ice houses in more detail in a later article.) You break off some chunks of ice, and bring them to the kitchen. You then get the ice cream machine out–a wooden pail with a tin cylinder in the middle, and a crank on top.

You fill the cylinder with heavy cream (that you likely separated yourself that morning after milking, unless you lived in town and had milk delivery). Then you added any desired flavourings, based on what was in season. Maybe a nice blueberry or raspberry ice cream, perhaps peach. Throw in a little sugar, insert the mixing paddle and put the lid on. Set the cylinder in the pail, latch the crank to the top, and surround the cylinder with small chunks of ice.  Sprinkle the ice with coarse salt, to help with the cooling process. Next, go sit outside on the front verandah with a cold drink, and start cranking—for the next 30-45 minutes, depending on how fast you crank. (This is a great bonding exercise for squabbling children! Plus everyone gets the benefit at the end!)

After the cranking is done, scoop the ice cream into bowls, and enjoy! Be sure to eat it all quickly, because the ice house won’t be cold enough to keep it frozen for long!

So, on summer days then and now, you’ll see kids enjoying ice cream to beat the summer heat…only somehow it’s not quite so much fun, without the work, is it? At least, that’s what you’d see if you took a glance in Rideau’s Rearview. (Try this at home! If you don’t have an ice cream maker, use a mason jar as the cylinder, and put it in a Ziploc bag full of ice and salt, and start shaking!)

UPCOMING HERITAGE EVENTS:

-Milling Demonstration @ Watson’s Mill (Sundays 1-3pm)

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