Question: Had a childhood memory of eating a wonderful frozen dessert “Sultana Roll with Claret Sauce” - I did find a recipe, but none of my friends remember this or have even heard of it.
As I recall, it was advertised on TV sometime in the 1950’s around Boston.
Was this popular in other parts of the country or was it an East Coast thing?
Recipe: Sultana Roll with Claret Sauce
Pistachio Ice Cream
¼ cup shelled pistachios mixed into 14oz vanilla ice cream
Claret Sauce
1 cup sugar
1/4 cup water
1/3 cup claret
Boil sugar and water eight minutes; cool slightly, and add claret.
Sultana Raisins
These are Golden Raisins. Soak ¾ cup of raisins in Brandy ( or Rum ) for one hour.
Sultana Roll
Line one-pound baking-powder boxes with Pistachio Ice Cream; sprinkle with Sultana raisins which have been soaked one hour in brandy; fill centres with Vanilla Ice Cream or whipped cream, sweetened, and flavored with vanilla; cover with Pistachio Ice Cream; pack in salt and ice, and let stand one and one-half hours.
[Moderating]
Welcome to the SDMB, lightrasp. One of our forums, Cafe Society, is dedicated to the arts, and it might not be immediately obvious, but that’s deemed to include cuisine. This thread will fit much better in that forum, so I’ll just move it over there for you.
That sounded fucking awful, even before I saw that you had to shove the fucking melted ice cream — how do you stir nuts into ice cream without reducing it to mush? — into “baking powder boxes.”
There’s a reason most mid-20th century recipes have been forgotten.
…are you from this country, American? I can’t imagine anyone in this land making or eating such a thing. I just can’t. 'Muricans are peanut-butter-and-chocolate gobblers… ‘baking powder boxes’? ‘packed in ice’? on what planet did this recipe originate?
Measuring in cups (and 1/3 cups in particular), ounces and pounds, it does sound pretty American!
Packing in salt and ice…yeah, I’ve seen that: salt to melt it, creating greater surface area of cold to contact that which is being frozen. But I’ve also seen hand-cranked cars. Freezers exist now!
I enjoy reading /r/vintagemenus on Reddit. Most are from long before my time but it’s fascinating to see what people ate in the past. Formerly common ‘fancy’ items that probably haven’t appeared on a menu in a long time include olives and celery.
Example 1:
Example 2:
Another is frog legs which appear to have been pretty popular decades ago. Example 1 has them listed. I saw them in Lousiana a couple weeks ago but can’t remember the last time I saw them on a menu before that.
How many average Americans know what “claret” is? We also don’t use the term “sultana” on this side of the pond. I’ll bet the recipe is British-ish and from the early 20th Century.
Kidding aside, one thing I’ve noticed that I never see anymore is Hershey’s Special Deep Dark Chocolate in anything other than bags of miniature mixes. They used to sell a full-sized bar, and the “big block” variety, which was the equivalent of their “king size” bars today.
I don’t know if it’s a regional thing, but I miss them.
I did wonder about that. I couldn’t be sure about claret (though it did look a bit out of place), but I was pretty sure Americans didn’t say “sultana”. That said, no Brit would say “sultana raisins” either: they’re just sultanas.
And pistachio ice-cream…I knew one place you could get that when I was a kid, and that was in the 80s, in an ice-cream place that made a point of being American-style. It wasn’t a standard flavour to find in shops, and it still isn’t overly common. Maybe it had been more common here decades earlier, but given the traditional British taste for boiling food until it turns grey, and deriding anything not instantly familiar as “foreign muck”, I’d be really very surprised.
Try looking for pistachio in places that serve gelato. I think it’s a pretty standard offering there. And it’s not just vanilla with nuts added. It should be light green and have a nutty (I’d say almondy) taste. I assume some kind of extract is added to the ice cream to give it that distinctive flavor.
Try buying a European-style shower head with a hose attached and using it to wash your nether regions after taking a dump. That’s what I do. Feels much better than just wiping, too. :o
They have them (the shower heads) at Walmart, if you want to risk getting infected there.
Oh yeah, I know it’s not like trying to find badger & oyster flavour, I just mean it’s not like you see it routinely in the freezers at Sainsbury’s. And in pre-war Britain? Unlikely to be a staple!
