Bergen County Historical Society
River Edge NJ, Friday’s Fare from Historic New Bridge Landing is Peach Ice Cream . Thomas Jefferson, enamored with French cooking, brought one back along with the recipe from his stint as US Ambassador to France. A sabotiere is a copper cylinder can with a handle placed in a bucket of salted ice. First, a [French] custard of eggs, cream and sugar is cooked the day before. A flavoring is then added in. Some flavors back then were oyster, parmesan cheese and orange blossom. We added in chopped peaches, preserved from last year. The cooked custard is left to cool overnight in a spring house [in the fridge]. The sabotiere is placed in a bucket of ice with salt, and then is 1/3 filled with custard. It sits to get the metal cold, then is turned 10 times, the inside is scraped down to move the more frozen custard to the center and stirred, then turned 10x; repeating this procedure until the contents have thickened. It takes awhile, and does not get rock hard like today’s confection. It’s more like a very stiff cold custard. FYI – French ice cream has eggs, whereas American generally does not. A special treat from last month’s General Washington’s birthday celebration was making ice cream using a sabotiere. Our ad hoc version gave our young visitors a hand at turning it, as they counted the 10 turns. There were so many, they were it turning all day and had fun. https://www.bergencountyhistory.org/