Cucumber ice cream (Victorian style)
By: 
 
This recipe comes courtesy of the Queen of Victorian Ices - Agnes B Marshall. While cucumber as a sweet ice cream flavour may seem eccentric in our days, it is a surprisingly nice, refreshing and summery ice cream!
Ingredients
  • 1 large cucumber
  • about 115 ml (4 ounces/ ½ US cup) sugar
  • about 275 ml (1/2 pint / 1⅕ US cup) water
  • A "wine glass" Ginger brandy (optional; about 3-4 tablespoons should probably do fine)
  • Juice of 2 lemons
  • a little green food colouring (optional but an integral part of the original recipe)
  • about 475 ml (1 UK pint or about 2 US cups) sweetened cream (= add about 115 gram/ ½ cup sugar to the cream)
Instructions
  1. Peel and remove any seed from the cucumber. Slice in pieces and put in a saucepan.
  2. Mix in the water and the sugar and cook the cucumber until tender.
  3. While the cucumber still is warm, purée it (the Victorians would have pounded the cucumber to soften it a little, then pushed it through a sieve: a handheld blender will do perfectly, although you still may use a sieve for a cucumber-solids free base).
  4. Add the ginger brandy, the lemon juice and the green food colouring. Sieve the purée-part of the base (see above).
  5. Add the sweetened cream and mix well.
  6. Freeze as per your liking (as usual, it is recommended to let the base cool down and preferably chill in the refrigerator for a few hours before churning in your ice cream machine. The same preparations are recommended before still-freezing the base if you're using your kitchen freezer instead of an ice cream machine).
Notes
PS. If you prefer, you could also add the finished special cucumber purée to a custard ice cream base of your liking (this is even set out as an option in Agnes Marshall's own recipe)
Recipe by ICE CREAM NATION at https://www.icecreamnation.org/2021/07/cucumber-ice-cream-victorian-style/