She Became A Downfall Noble Lady-Chapter 74 - Ancient Ice Cream

Chapter 74: Chapter 74: Ancient Ice Cream

Visit freewebnoveℓ.com for the best novel reading exp𝒆rience.

Chapter 74 -74: Ancient Ice Cream

Qi Cheng and his wife were both earnest workers; once the tables and chairs were in place, Qi Cheng could already knead the dough and bake flatbreads by himself. Ye Xinyan taught Lady Li how to make rice tofu and corn pancakes. Lady Li, having come from a modest farming background, was no stranger to kitchen work, and learned these tasks quite easily.

As for greeting customers, with a little dedication, mastery comes quickly, and the two of them gradually became familiar with the task.

With these two robust workers joining, both Ye Xinyan and Qi Younian felt a significant relief. In private, Ye Xinyan consulted with Nanny Jin and Qi Younian about whether to give them a raise.

Nanny Jin, who had seen large coins, didn’t fuss over such matters, and of course, Qi Younian nodded in agreement, but he suggested that they wait until the end-of-month accounts showed a profit before officially offering a wage increase.

This was the essence of performance-based pay. Ye Xinyan couldn’t help but chuckle to herself. It seemed that even after a thousand years of productive advancement, human nature hadn’t changed much; ancient reward mechanisms were much the same.

With some free time, Ye Xinyan began to plan the ice dessert business she had in mind. She did not have the miraculous abilities of those with golden fingers, and only intended to use a pure calorific exchange method to make ice cream.

From what she’d heard the older generation say, before the emergence of large modern food enterprises—when resources were very scarce—small businesses in underdeveloped areas would use salt and the ice stored in ice cellars to make popsicles and ice cream.

Back then, without the vast array of flavors and options of ice cream or sorbet available, a few cents for a popsicle could satisfy children during the midsummer heat.

And ice cream was a step up from popsicles, just with more milk and egg yolks.

Introducing ice cream in this era’s summers should be a high-profit, rare business venture, one that could take a premium approach.

Ye Xinyan had already figured out the marketing strategy. She would rent a small shop next to the largest restaurant in the county town and decorate it exquisitely. Initially, she would mainly supply the restaurant with frozen drinks and snacks. When customers at the restaurant required it, they would be served directly from her small shop through the waitstaff.

The profits from the frozen drinks and snacks would be shared with the restaurant. With the largest restaurant advertising for her small shop, turning the business into a high-end one wouldn’t require much effort.

If she could make ice cream, that would be ideal. However, extracting cream or even light cream was too difficult for the period; there were no specialized dairy cows, and the milk yield from cows that had calved was very low, besides, there was no trade specifically for keeping dairy cows.

Therefore, she had no choice but to settle for the ice cream recipe spoken of by the village elders. She would strive to make the ice cream as smooth as possible, reducing the ice crystals, aiming for it to approach the texture of ice cream.

If she could successfully make ice cream and considering it was still the midsummer season, it could potentially sell well for over a month. Even after the summer, ice cream would still be attractive to the well-off and pampered wealthy. During the winter, as long as the restaurants and rich households had adequate heating, there would still be a demand for ice cream.

Ye Xinyan estimated that if the business went well, within two months she could accumulate a considerable amount of silver. By the autumn and winter, she could think about expanding the dessert shop to include more leisure snacks. In addition to various desserts, she could offer soups and a variety of delicate pastries.

If Grandfather was unwilling to leave the village, she could use the money earned to buy some land, build a new house in the village, and lease out the land. By doing so, the lives of their family of four could be completely stabilized.

Land and real estate were fixed assets. Especially land — in ancient times, so long as there was enough of it to secure sufficient stores of grain, it was the fundamental basis for a stable and prosperous life.

No sooner said than done, Ye Xinyan took advantage of her spare time to inquire about farms with new calves and places selling ice blocks. She also prepared other ingredients for making ice cream such as cornmeal and eggs. The groundwork was ready within three to four days.

That day, Ye Xinyan first went to buy a small can of milk. Then, she bought ice blocks, which she wrapped in oilcloth, a wooden box, and layers of cotton quilts.

After Rice tofu closed the stand and went home, Ye Xinyan didn’t even help Nanny Jin make lunch but started to try making Ice Cream.

She first boiled the milk, waited for it to cool slightly, then mixed in the superfine corn flour, sugar, and egg yolks she had prepared in advance, boiled it again, and cooked it into a paste-like consistency, stirring it intermittently while waiting for the milk paste to cool.

Next was the key step in making the Ice Cream. She poured the cooled milk paste into a small, thin-walled iron bucket and then placed the iron bucket inside a larger wooden bucket. Between the wooden bucket and the iron bucket, she put in crushed ice blocks and coarse salt grains.

Then, it was necessary to keep the wooden bucket as cold as possible. She wrapped the wooden bucket in layers of quilts and cotton batting, and after that, it was a matter of patiently waiting for the heat transfer between the milk paste and the ice blocks, allowing the milk paste to freeze. The freezing time of the milk paste was quite long, and it needed to be stirred vigorously several times during the process to reduce ice particles during freezing.

After this flurry of activity, when Ye Xinyan lifted the lid of the wooden bucket and the Ice Cream in the small bucket began to exude strands of cool air, it was already after the midday nap.

The ice bucket had been placed on the stove in the outer room, which was idle during the summer. The other three people in the house were almost dumbfounded when they saw the Ice Cream emitting cold air.

Qi Younian was even more astonished. The milk paste in that thin-walled iron bucket had actually frozen, just like something in the icy cold of winter.

It took him quite some time to open his mouth and ask with difficulty, “How did you freeze this thing during the peak of summer?”

Ye Xinyan claimed she wanted to make a snack that would earn more money than Rice tofu, and out of curiosity, Qi Younian had watched the entire process.

He had seen with his own eyes Ye Xinyan using milk, egg yolks, corn flour, and sugar to make a paste, which she poured into the small bucket. Then she mixed crushed ice blocks and salt, poured them into the gap between the wooden bucket and the iron bucket, covered it, and wrapped it with thick quilts on all sides.

Ye Xinyan had not said she was making a freezable Ice Cream, and Qi Younian had not expected that such a treatment could turn the milk paste into a frozen food.

Because Qi Younian did not know what kind of food Ye Xinyan would ultimately produce, he felt rather regretful, thinking that the snack was truly labor-intensive. Even if it was produced, it might not be as convenient or profitable as the morning food stalls.

In the end, this girl had actually made such a miraculous thing. It was midsummer, the weather was so hot it was almost smoking, and Ye Zi had actually served up frozen food.

Underneath Qi Younian’s bewilderment, he peeked again at the ice-filled gap. Now, the ice in the gap had melted into water, but how come it was the original milk paste that had frozen? How did these two different states of matter exchange?

Qi Younian pointed at the wooden bucket and stammered, “This, this is water, right? How can it freeze something that was originally a paste?”

Ye Xinyan blinked, for she could not possibly explain to this ancient elder the physical properties of saline water and the relationship curve between the concentration of saline water and its freezing point, could she?

She looked again at Nanny Jin, who was also staring at her with wide eyes, waiting for her to solve the mystery.

“Well, Grandfather, I also stumbled upon this idea. Like in winter, saline doesn’t freeze, you know that, right? Don’t understand? The pickling vat, when we make pickles, even when it’s very cold in winter, the saline in the pickling vat doesn’t freeze, does it?” Ye Xinyan explained.