Thomas Jefferson’s Vanilla Ice Cream
Thomas Jefferson is famous for writing the Declaration of Independence, but he also loved food.
In the 1780s, he tried ice cream in France. He loved it so much that he brought an ice cream maker back to America to serve to his guests.
He left behind thousands of documents, but only ten are handwritten recipes. One of them is for his favorite vanilla ice cream.
I’ve updated his old French custard recipe so you can easily make it at home today.
The Ingredients
- 2 quarts heavy cream
- 6 egg yolks
- ½ pound sugar
- 1 whole vanilla bean
The Process
- Mix eggs and sugar: Whisk the egg yolks and sugar in a large bowl until the mixture turns pale yellow.
- Heat the cream: Put the cream and vanilla bean in a pot on the stove. Heat it until it almost boils, then immediately take it off the heat.
- Mix them slowly: If you pour all the hot cream into the eggs at once, they will scramble. Instead, whisk the eggs constantly while slowly pouring in just a little bit of the hot cream. Once the eggs are warm, mix in the rest.
- Thicken the mix: Pour everything back into the pot and cook on low heat. Stir constantly with a wooden spoon so it doesn’t burn. Cook until it gets a little thick, but do not let it boil.
- Strain and cool: Pour the hot mixture through a strainer into a clean bowl to catch the vanilla bean and any cooked egg bits. Let it cool completely.
Back then, making ice cream took hours of hard work by hand. Today, you can just pour your cold mixture into an ice cream maker and let the machine do the work!
Sources: Monticello, the Library of Congress, the Smithsonian Institution, and the FoodTimeline library.