The empress of ice cream

Carlo

i

Barberries and bergamots are amongst the fruits which make better ices than eating.

The Book of Ices

Louis XIV led the advance on the Dutch personally, riding almost unopposed at the head of a great Franco-English army up through the Spanish Netherlands. But the Hollanders, realising they could not beat him in open warfare, opened the dykes and flooded a vast area of the country he had hoped to conquer. Frustrated, the Sun King was forced to play a waiting game.

Armies are expensive things, and armies that are not marching - that are not plundering and pillaging as they go - are more expensive still. For Louis, of course, it was nothing to snap his fingers and demand another tax. For his ally Charles, with his Parliament to consider, it was a different matter.

The Great Stop of the Exchequer, when his government had grandly announced that it would be paying neither interest nor capital on its debts for a period of a year, now looked like a terrible miscalculation. For what banker would lend rhore to a king who did not keep up his payments? What debt was safe, if a king could subsequently alter its terms as it pleased him?

His only income now was his pension from Louis, and what he could raise from Parhament. Parhament made it clear that it would vote no more without results. The king was on the verge of bankruptcy.

That was the month he gave Louise a sedan chair upholstered in silver silk, and two negro footmen to carry it; 'a necklace worth three thousand pounds, a rope of pearls worth twice that, and

rebuilt her apartments to include a hall of mirrors. That was the month he gave Nell a carriage with six white horses, to show that she was the lover of royalty, and a silver table to match her silver plates. That was the month he ordered the building of a new state apartment at Windsor, and flooded St James’s Park for a mock battle on the water.

It was a summer of ice creams - of course it was. The king was much taken with his new glasshouses; his gardeners had succeeded in growing a fine crop of pineapples, apricots and musk melons, and he gave orders that I was to have whatever I desired. I made an ice cream that looked exactly like a pineapple, sweetened with a littie sugar and grape must. I surrounded it with real pineapples and sliced it open with a flourish in front of the king himself, declaring that he would find it the sweetest, ripest fruit in his kingdom. This event occasioned more amazement at court, I believe, than the capitulation of Utrecht.

I found myself running out of ideas. Once I had served the king and his guests every fruit that England grew, every cordial of Europe, every seed water of the world, what then?

Sometimes I found myself wishing I was like Hannah, who served no more than five or six pies in any one month, depending on what had taken her fancy at the market.

‘What is this?’ I called to her across the inn’s dining room one day, as I lifted a steaming crust on something rich and deep-red and unfamiliar.

‘Umble pie.’

‘I am still none the wiser.’

‘Venison offal. A deer’s heart, tongue, brains, and stomach, with onion gravy and thyme. All the parts that wealthy people don’t want to eat.’

Yet even wealthy people, I noticed, now sent their servants to the Red Lion to buy a few pies for their supper. Hannah’s renown was spreading.

‘And tomorrow?’

‘Cock-a-leekie. On Thursday, ale-and-kidney. And on Friday, cheese-and-onion. Why?’

I grunted. ‘I need some new flavours for the king.’

‘Send him a pie,’ she said facetiously.

I could not, of course, but the next time I was in the pantry I pulled out her cookbooks and thumbed through them, looking for ideas.

‘What are you doing?’ Hannah asked, coming in.

‘I mean to make some herb sorbets. This sounds interesting, for example. Culpeper speaks of the culinary uses of nettles—’

‘You should be more careful. I have told you that book should not be left out,’ she said quietly.

I looked at her, perplexed. ‘I thought you meant, to keep the pages clean.’

She shook her head. ‘Culpeper’s books have been banned by the Stationer’s Office. If they find them, they burn the book and arrest the owner. And that’s if you’re lucky. Sometimes they burn both. Herbals make good witches’ pyres, they say.’

‘But why?’

She took the book from me and slid it back into the shelf. ‘Culpeper was a Fifth-monarchy-man - that is to say, one of those who believed that the time of kings was coming to an end, and the time of freeborn men beginning. That was partly why he published his knowledge, and in plain English - so that ordinary people could have the information that physicians and apothecaries were trying to keep to themselves, with their Latin and their guilds. Much good it did him. Or those who followed him.’

I remembered those herbs in her pies - sage, sorrel, a delicious whisper of tarragon, onion gravy and thyme . . . ‘You were one of them? A herbalist?’

She nodded. ‘Among other things.’

‘Then will you help me devise some ices?’

She shrugged. ‘I suppose so. Why not?’

‘Good. I will pay you something extra—’

I do not want paying,’ she said quietly. ‘Culpeper gave his own knowledge away for nothing, in the hope that people would make use of it. It is not for me to make a profit from it.’

And so began another stage of my culinary education. For while we began by making simple herb sorbets - nettle, sage, fig leaf, pelargonium and lemon balm — it soon became apparent that herbs were even better in combination, either with each other or with other tastes, and that by employing them in this way an almost infinite variety of flavours could be created.

This, truly, was no longer engineering. This was cookery, pure and simple. For certain flavours married, and others did not, and it required both imagination and skill to envisage what such a marriage might be like - whether it would be a fruitful union or a barren one. Who would have thought, for example, that pippin and rose petal ice cream would be so good, the deep, sweet richness of the apples and the voluptuous scent of the flowers making the ice cream almost ridiculously sensual and heady in the mouth Who would have thought that celery - the mildest and most watery of vegetables - would, when its seeds were toasted and combined with hibiscus flowers, have the clean, piercing, dry flavour it did? Who would have paired blackcurrant and mint, or oranges and basil, or made a cordial of maidenhair fern and black pepper?

Fig and bay leaves, peach and hyssop, clotted cream and lavender, apricot and cardamom - these were among the ice creams we made that day. They were majestic, fascinating, even remarkable yet the ingredients were as simple as an English summer’s garden.

I could not ask Hannah not to taste them, of course; I needed her expertise and her palate. And when she in turn wanted to get the opinion of a third person, someone who did not know what to expect, she quite naturally turned to Elias and gave him a spoonful, and he told us what he thought.

‘It’s-wonderful!’ he cried of an ice cream straight out of Culpeper, made with cucumbers and celery.

‘It is, isn’t it!’ his mother replied. And the two of them danced a litde jig around the pantry.

‘I thought you would be against such things,’ I said, surprised.

‘Why.^ We h-e not opposed to pleasure, only to privilege.’

‘Yet these are for the king alone,’ I reminded her. ‘The king and a few of his favourites.’

‘Yes,’ she said, a little deflated. ‘Of course.’

‘Perhaps if you met him you would not be so against him. He is a charming man.’

‘Perhaps,’ she said flady, and danced no more.

Later that month, as the king ate an ice cream of barberries and lemon balm, he said to me thoughtfully, ‘You are a man who knows about ice, Demirco.’

‘Indeed, sir.’

‘Louis’s plan is to wait for winter. After all, if we can ride coaches across the Thames, why should he not drive his cannon across the frozen polders?’

I hesitated, and he said, ‘You think it will not work?’

‘The issue is how much salt there is,’ I explained. ‘Just as the Thames does not freeze below The Great Bridge,^ so allowing in seawater would immediately cause the polders to unfreeze again. It all depends how determined the Dutch are to resist the invasion.’

‘William of Orange has stated that every Dutchman will drown before they see their country Catholic.’

‘Then I certainly would not trust to ice alone to win this war.’

A few weeks later Arlington and Buckingham were sent to Holland to try to conclude a separate peace. The French, furious, accused the English of betrayal. In the event, no peace was forthcoming, and we were back at war, with the added complication that now Charles’s own allies did not trust him either.

‘Do you think we will ever get back to France?’ I asked Louise one day, when I took her an ice of jonquilles and lemons.

I don’t know,’ she said wearily. ‘In any case, it is different for me now. Who would marry me and take on a royal bastard as well? It is one thing to turn a blind eye to a scandalous past, quite another to have that past growing up in your household.’

I said, ‘Perhaps you will marry someone of lowly birth, who will love you and love your son as well. Perhaps you will be happy together without titles, or wealth.’

She looked at me and smiled. ‘Do you know of such a man?’

‘I have heard rumours that some such do exist.’

She said gently, ‘You are too loyal. Carlo. I have done nothing to be worthy of this adoration.’

‘On the contrary. I don’t adore you in the least. I find you maddeningly practical; hard-headed, haughty, proud—’

‘Thank you. I was not actually inviting a catalogue of my failings.’

I shrugged. ‘Better to admire someone whose failings you are aware of, than a stranger.’

‘And the king?’

‘What about him?’

‘The fact that that I am his mistress. Does that not change how you feel?’

‘Why should it?’ I busied myself with some glasses. ‘I know you do not do it for love.’

She was silent a moment. ‘I used to think love was only a fancy. But now I realise that it is a force almost as strong as an army.’

‘Charles loves you.’

She shook her head. ‘He likes me, and he desires me, and he likes to see me happy. He loves me in the same way he loves Windsor, or tennis - I am necessary to his well being, and his sense of being a king. And I am useful, too, in that I give him good advice. He loves Nell Gwynne far more than me.’

‘Nell!’

‘Certainly. At any rate, she is the one woman he can never give up, even though he knows that Louis or any other king would be appalled at the notion of keeping a common whore as a mistress. So yes, I think he does love her.’

‘While she,'presumably, is only after his money.

‘Oh no - that is to misunderstand her. She may be an actress and a whore, but she genuinely delights in their connection.’

‘And you,’ I said, ‘who are neither actress nor whore . . .’

‘Must play a part, and lie with a man I do not love. Yes, that irony had occurred to me as well.’

‘Can you beat her?’

‘Perhaps. But there is so much else to do. We must find a way to make him keep fighting this war. Parliament must be prevented from forcing him to sue for peace. James must be married before he changes his mind. More money. More battles.’

I went back to the Red Lion that day feeling a little melancholy. Hannah was in the pantry, making pastry for her pies.

‘What are you looking at?’ she asked.

‘Nothing.’

She measured out a jar of flour, broke two eggs into it, and began to mix it all together. After a while she turned to face me. ‘I really cannot work with you staring at me hke that.’

‘I was not staring,’ I explained. ‘Or., at least, not at you. You happened to be standing in the general direction of my gaze, that is all.’

She sighed, and turned back to her pastry.

‘But since you ask,’ I added, ‘we could go to my rooms, later.’

Her voice when she answered was flat. ‘You have been at court today, I take it?’ • >

‘Yes.’

‘With Madam Carwell?’

‘What does that have to do with it?’

Only that I have noticed it is after you have been with her that you are most likely to invite me to your rooms.’

I shrugged, but since she was not looking at me she could not see it. I invite you to my rooms because the arrangement suits both of us. You gan come or not, as you choose. It is up to you.’

It seemed to me that she was struggling to decide whether to say something. ‘Tell me,’ she said. ‘When you first came here, how did you know what I wasi* That I would go with you for money?’

‘An acquaintance told me what English inn servants were hke. And then I found you with that man. He knew what you were.’

‘Yes,’ she said. ‘He called me a ranter whore. But that was a figure of speech. He was referring to the fact that I was a dissenter.’

‘He threatened you with arrest.’

‘He was a spy. He was trying to coerce me into spying on you.’

‘On me!’ I said, bemused.

‘I was meant to find out how you made your ice creams. But I had already given you my word that I wouldn’t tell anyone, so I didn’t.’

‘But . . .’ I said, perplexed. ‘When I told you to come to my room, that first time, you came. You took my money’

‘Yes.’

‘So Cassell was right. You are what he said you are.’

She addressed the pastry. ‘Perhaps. But I have decided that in future, signor, I would be obliged if you would ask Mary or Rose instead.’

‘Why?’

She did not answer me for a long time, only working her fingers into the mound of dough. Eventually she said, ‘It would not be fair on Elias, if he were to discover what we do.’

‘Oh. I see.’

‘He admires you. He might. . . misunderstand our association. He might read into it more than there actually is.’

‘Well, in that case I will make sure that I do not ask you again.’

‘Thank you.’

‘I will ask Mary. Or Rose, as the case may be.’

‘Exactly’ She took her rolling pin and banged her mound of pastry, so hard that a cloud of flour jumped into the air.