THE ICE CREAM SHOP, MAIN STREET — The famous one. When a fresh batch is churned, word travels faster than the Sheriff. There is no machine in Westler — Mr. Wintle makes this by arm, and it takes about half an hour of steady work.
What's In It
- Waka melon, the ripe pink middle only, mashed and strained
- Cream, thick, brought in that same morning
- Sugar
- A pinch of salt in the cream, which makes it taste more like itself
- Ice, hauled up from the ice house
- Coarse salt for the packing — this is not for eating, it is what makes the cold
How It's Made
- Mash the melon and press it through a cloth so you keep the juice and leave the seeds and strings behind.
- Stir the melon into the cream with the sugar and the pinch of salt. Pour it all into a tall tin pail.
- Stand the pail inside a wooden tub, leaving about four fingers of room all the way around it.
- Pack that gap with broken ice and coarse salt, layer on layer, right up past the level of the cream. The salt is the whole secret — ice on its own is not cold enough to freeze cream, but ice and salt together are.
- Now the work. Turn the pail steadily by its handle, and every little while lift the lid and scrape the frozen cream off the sides with a long-handled spoon, folding it back into the middle. Keep turning. Keep scraping. If you stop, you get a block instead of ice cream.
- When it's thick enough to mound on the spoon, lid it, bury the whole pail under fresh ice and salt, and leave it be for a few hours to firm up.
Where You'll Find It
Main Street, in the cold case, through the warm months and only while the melons hold out. At the end of harvest Mr. Wintle sells the last-of-the-harvest Waka scoop — with a free extra spoon for anyone sharing with a critter, which happens more than you'd think in this town.