How to Cook That: A 200-Year-Old Apple Tart and Strawberry Ice Cream with a Twist

Welcome to How To Cook That, I'm Ann Reardon and today we're making a 200 year-old apple tart and strawberry ice cream that uses a really unusual ingredient... dried bugs! Let's start with the ice cream recipe. This book was published 200 years ago so there was no electricity, no freezers, and definitely no ice cream machines back then. It says 'to a pound of preserved fruit which may be of what kind you choose add a quart of good cream'. Now I wanted to use preserved fruit that was made in the same way that they would have done it. Canning was only just being invented at the time of this book being written, so you couldn't just go to the shops and buy a tin of fruit. Further on in this recipe it says 'we need butter' and I found an old butter churn on eBay. Isn't it awesome! It said it was working but by that I think they meant that the handle turned which it does but it had a massive crack in the bottom so if you poured cream into it, just would have run straight out.

So what I did was to get a little bit of beeswax and melt it and pour it into the crack and while it was still soft, take the excess off. I really didn't want to use glue because this is an antique, but I needed something to seal the deal. I've given it a good wash so now it's time to add the cream. Unfortunately, it is still leaking but it's not coming from the crack; it's coming from a different spot on the side so I'm gonna have to tip out the cream and add some more wax on the edges and try again. Clearly when they said it was working, they didn't imagine anyone would actually want to use it to make butter.

The practice of churning cream to make butter has been around for a very, very long time. It's even mentioned in the Bible! Proverbs says: "Chase not after precious things." Could this be referring to our old friend, butter? Anyway, moving on from butter making, we have our ice cream recipe. Have your freezing pot nice and clean and put your cream into it. Now from what I could see online, a freezing pot looked something like this... a tall metal container with a lid.

Then it says to cover it, so we'll put the lid on and 'put it into your tub with ice beat small and some salt'. Okay so let's add some ice all over it and a generous amount of salt. Salt lowers the freezing point of water so it helps make the ice melt into a liquid that is below freezing level but it's not solid and then when that comes in contact with the metal tub, it'll help freeze our ice cream. People still do this today, so I find it fascinating that they already had this figured out 200 years ago.

Then it says turn the freezing pot quick and as the cream sticks to the sides scrape it down with your ice spoon and so on until it is frozen. The more the cream is worked into the side with the spoon, the smoother and better the flavor will be. Now I'm not quite sure how I'm supposed to turn it quick... I can spin it I guess and then scrape down the frozen ice cream from the sides. Hand cranked ice cream machines were not invented for another 40 years, so I guess I'll just keep spinning and scraping and 20 minutes later it's thick and frozen, that's looking good.

Time to move on to making the unusual apple dessert. I'm in the fruit pies section of this book and I want to try the apple tart. 'Scald eight to ten large codlins'... now codlins are an old breed of green apples that I can't get here so I'm using Granny Smith apples and putting them into boiling water. After a few minutes they look like this and it says to let them stand until they are cold.

Further on in this recipe, it says we need butter and I found some, but making the apple tart is not without its challenges. The practice of churning cream to make butter has been around for a very, very long time. It's even mentioned in the Bible! Proverbs says: “Chase not after precious things.” Could this be referring to our old friend, butter? Anyway, moving on from butter making, we have our apple tart recipe.

Have your freezing pot nice and clean and put your cream into it. Now from what I could see online, a freezing pot looked something like this... a tall metal container with a lid. Then it says to cover it, so we'll put the lid on and 'put it into your tub with ice beat small and some salt'. Okay so let's add some ice all over it and a generous amount of salt. Salt lowers the freezing point of water so it helps make the ice melt into a liquid that is below freezing level but it's not solid and then when that comes in contact with the metal tub, it'll help freeze our ice cream.

People still do this today, so I find it fascinating that they already had this figured out 200 years ago. Then it says turn the freezing pot quick and as the cream sticks to the sides scrape it down with your ice spoon and so on until it is frozen. The more the cream is worked into the side with the spoon, the smoother and better the flavor will be. Now I'm not quite sure how I'm supposed to turn it quick... I can spin it I guess and then scrape down the frozen ice cream from the sides.

Hand cranked ice cream machines were not invented for another 40 years, so I guess I'll just keep spinning and scraping and 20 minutes later it's thick and frozen, that's looking good. Time to move on to making the unusual apple dessert.

"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: enWelcome to How To Cook That, I'm Ann Reardon and today we're making a 200 year-old apple tart and  strawberry ice cream that uses a really unusual ingredient ... dried bugs! Let's start with the  ice cream recipe ... this book was published 200 years ago so there was no electricity,  no freezers and definitely no ice cream machines back then. It says 'to a pound of preserved fruit  which may be of what kind you choose add a quart of good cream'. Now I wanted to use preserved  fruit that was made in the same way that they would have done it. Canning was only just being  invented at the time of this book being written so you couldn't just go to the shops and buy a  tin of fruit. Further on in the book there's a whole chapter on preserving all different  kinds of fruits and I followed the directions for strawberries, which was basically done by  gently heating them with double their weight in sugar and sealing it up. This method of preserving  fruit in jars was only invented a few years before this book was published and it worked but they  didn't yet know why it worked. It wasn't until 50 years later when Louis Pasteur explained that it  killed the microorganisms that caused it to go off and sealing it stopped more from getting in. The  large amount of sugar would also of course help stop microbial activity but they didn't know that.  'Add to that a quart of good cream and the juice of two lemons squeezed into it. Add some sugar  to your palette it doesn't really need a whole lot more sugar there was so much in with the  strawberries and then let the hole be rubbed through a fine hair sieve'. Now they obviously  didn't have a metal sieve like I do ... a hair sieve was made out of wood around the outside and  woven horse hair in the middle. I guess we'll just squash the strawberries through the metal sieve  because I don't have one of those. They bottled their strawberries with the stems on but we don't  want stems in the ice cream of course so I'm going to chop all those off and take them off and after  20 minutes of trying I just can't get this last bit to go through so we'll just go with that.  Stir the strawberries into the cream and then what's next: 'let the hole be rubbed through the  fine hair see if we've done that and if raspberry strawberry or any red fruit you must add a little  cochineal to heighten the color'. Now cochineal are sap-sucking scale insects that live on cacti,  if you move their waxy white cotton wool-like covering off you can see the little red insect  bodies. These are then collected and dried out and that's what I have here in this bowl. If we  take a closer look this is what they look like when they're dried, they look a bit like little  rocks really not so much like bugs but let's crush them using my trusty mortar and pestle.Look at that ruby red color wow that's awesome ... don't you wonder who discovered this and tried  it first? Like who ate one of these bugs to check it wasn't poisonous and that it didn't taste bad?  Boggles my mind. Cochineal is actually still used in some foods and lipsticks today for this red  color. If you just look for the words carmine cochineal cochineal extract crimson lake carmine  lake natural red4 75470 or e120 on the ingredients you've got bugs in it. It is actually being phased  out because it's expensive to harvest the insects and people don't like the idea of eating bugs  in their food but people also like the idea of things being natural and bugs are natural ... who  would be a food manufacturer it's really hard to please everyone! Have your freezing pot nice and  clean and put your cream into it. Now from what I could see online a freezing pot looked something  like this ... a tall metal container with a lid. Then it says to cover it, so we'll put the lid on  and 'put it into your tub with ice beat small and some salt'. Okay so let's add some ice all over it  and a generous amount of salt. Salt lowers the freezing point of water so it helps make the ice  melt into a liquid that is below freezing level but it's not solid and then when that comes in  contact with the metal tub it'll help freeze our ice cream. People still do this today so i find it  fascinating that they already had this figured out 200 years ago. Then it says turn the freezing pot  quick and as the cream sticks to the sides scrape it down with your ice spoon and so on until it is  froze. The more the cream is worked into the side with the spoon the smoother and better the flavor  will be. Now i'm not quite sure how i'm supposed to turn it quick ... i can spin it i guess  and then scrape down the frozen ice cream from the sides. Hand cranked ice cream machines were  not invented for another 40 years so i guess i'll just keep spinning and scraping and 20 minutes  later it's thick and frozen, that's looking good. Time to move on to making the unusual  apple dessert. I'm in the fruit pies section of this book and i want to try the apple tart.  'Scald eight to ten large codlins' ... now codlins are an old breed of green apples that i can't get  here so i'm using Granny Smith apples and putting them into boiling water. After a few minutes they  look like this and it says to let them stand until they are cold. Further on in this recipe it says  we need butter and I found this old butter churn on eBay. Isn't it awesome! It said it was working  but by that i think they meant that the handle turned which it does but it had a massive crack  in the bottom so if you poured cream into it it just would have run straight out. So what i did  was to get a little bit of beeswax and melt it and pour it into the crack and while it was still  soft to take the excess off. I really didn't want to use glue because this is an antique.  I've given it a good wash so now it's time to add the cream and unfortunately it is still leaking  but it's not coming from the crack it's coming from a different spot on the side so i'm gonna  have to tip out the cream and add some more wax on the edges and try again. Clearly when they  said it was working they didn't imagine anyone would actually want to use it to make butter.  Yay it's not leaking this time! The practice of churning cream to make butter has been around  for a very very long time. It's even mentioned in the Bible! Proverbs says: \"for as the churning of  cream produces butter and as the twisting of the nose produces blood so stirring up anger  produces strife\". But the way in which butter was churned has definitely changed over the years.  They used to use a tripod and fill a goat-skin with cream and air and then rock it back and  forward to make butter. Then there was an up and down churn where you pulled a plunger up and  down up and down fairly self-explanatory there and then a barrel churn where the whole barrel spun  and then that was refined to be like the one that I'm using which is a bit like a barrel but the  paddle on the inside turns. This particular one is by E Cherry in Melbourne it's about 150 years old.  After about 10 minutes of churning the fat in the cream is clumped together and separated from the  liquid so now we have butter and buttermilk. The book says to 'spread the butter thin in a bowl and  work it well together with such a quantity of salt as you think fit'. Back to our apples it says let  them stand until they are cold then take off the skins and beat the pulp as fine as possible with  a spoon. Well the skins come off fairly easily, I'm assuming we don't want the core part of the  apple so I'm just going to cut the chunks of apple off around the edges then it said to beat it to a  pulp using a spoon. There's no way I can beat this to a pulp with a spoon because it's just too firm  still and i wondered how they managed to do it did i need to boil it for longer but then i found the  answer thanks to Malcolm from Plantsman's Corner \"keswick codlin, one of the most lovely apples  really old one but it's a it's a strange apple it cooks to a froth it takes about 10, 20 seconds in  boiling to just reduce to a froth the puree is absolutely beautiful\". So that's my problem codlin  apples turn to a very soft pulp very quickly. I'm just gonna have to chop mine up with a knife  to try and make them a little bit smaller chunks they'll cook a bit more in the oven.  Then the weird thing is they say to add the yolks of six eggs and the whites of four which in other  words is four whole eggs with an extra two yolks but i've never mixed eggs in with apple like  this before it looks like scrambled eggs. Anyway we'll see what it tastes like when it's cooked.  'Beat it all together very fine and put in some grated nutmeg and sweetened to your taste.' Next  it says to make a puff paste now if we turn to earlier in the book it has a puff pastry recipe  here it says: 'puff paste must be made thus take a quarter of a peck of flour and rub into it a pound  of butter very fine make it up to a light paste with cold water just stiff enough to work it up  then roll it out about as thick as a crown piece put a layer of butter all over and then sprinkle  on a little flower. Double it up and roll it out again, double and roll it with layers of butter  three times and it will be properly fit for use.' This has made way more pastry than I need for one  apple tart i'll have to use the rest for something else. 'Pour the ingredients in but do not cover it  with paste. When you have baked it a quarter of an hour strewn over it some sugar finely beaten and  sifted'. Time to see what this 200-year-old apple tart and strawberry ice cream with bugs in it  tastes like ... hmm I like it, I think it's really good. I have to give it to  Dave though he's our true taste tester. Okay we have here a 200 year old apple tart recipe  and strawberry ice cream. Fantastic 200 years! I love apple pie. Hoping you like this...I do ... it's good it's thumbs up ... it's it's fresh it's delicious it's good. Can you guess  the other ingredient that they? Um 200 years ago? Is it whale? Baby seal? I don't know.Okay a mystery ingredient in the ice cream ... strawberry ice cream and then let me know if  you can taste anything else. It's quite nice it's uh very fresh it's not nearly as sweet  as what we would associate as strawberry ice cream now. But would you eat the whole plate  of dessert? Yeah absolutely yeah that's good I like it. The mystery ingredient in the pie  is eggs with the apple which was really unusual okay and the mystery ingredient in the ice cream  is bugs! I knew you would get me, what sort of bugs ... is it lice cream? It's cochineal bugs,  they make it a little bit red in color but they have no taste. Okay are you gonna eat the ice  cream? No I'll probably eat the pie though. They still use it nowadays yeah really okayit's actually really good I like it. Now something they didn't have 200 years ago was merch or they  may have like hessian sacks and stuff like that but what we have now is we got a whole uh bunch  of fresh merch just came out. See this is what we call the how to cook that science lab logo so that  just came out because obviously Ann is a food scientist we have a whole bunch of things like  uh debunking cups and other stuff. Just check them out there you can click down the bottom the other  one that i really love is our aprons and if you can just see that it's got an embroidered logo  h2ct. Really good quality I reckon you'll love it and I'm gonna go eat some more pie. You can see  more 200 year old recipes here and lots of other sweet stuff on my channel here with thanks to all  of my wonderful patrons for your ongoing support make it a great week and i'll see you on Friday.\n"