Confessions of a Freezeaholic - No. 300

The fascinating story of cold + book tour updates

My mother’s Chess Cake. The recipe is in my new book, Baking in the American South. Photo: Rinne Allen.

AS I BAKE AHEAD FOR BOOK TOUR, just as I have done for events and parties all my life, my freezer saves me. I bake and freeze goodies for sampling now, a culinary insurance policy that wards off last-minute stress. I can take that extra phone call, enjoy a movie after dinner, and maybe sleep at night instead of bake at the last minute because four recipes of my mother’s Chess Cake are tucked away in my freezer.

Many of my fondest food memories arose from my mother’s freezer. As a young adult when I would return to Nashville, before I walked upstairs to the kitchen where my mom was cooking, I’d stop in the basement and open her freezer.

There the beef stroganoff from a dinner party was carefully labeled, ice cream parfaits were ribboned with emerald green creme de menthe, and packages of yeast rolls were waiting to be warmed and fragrant once again. It wasn’t my being nosy about how often she was having people over, but more about remembering these frozen time capsules as her living, breathing recipes.

I knew what each one tasted like. And I admired my mother’s sense of preservation. Let’s just say knowing how to refrigerate and freeze food runs through my DNA.

My fridge contents once photographed for The Local Palate magazine.

The fridge is the most-used appliance in my kitchen.

With three children in the house, it was opened and shut constantly. And while I love my oven and dishwasher, the fridge/freezer suspend fresh food in time and allow me the freedom to cook and bake ahead.

They let me take a night off from cooking by simply reheating leftovers. And they are the ultimate lunch box for work-at-home folks who want to save money, time, and calories by not dining out. Home refrigeration and freezing have changed how often we shop for food, how much we cook, and have expanded our taste buds allowing us to season foods with mustards, capers, olives, tomato paste, and anchovies, to name just a few condiments hanging around my fridge. They birthed Tupperware. They have changed everything. But it wasn’t always the case.

Refrigerator advertisement in Country Life magazine (UK) 1951. Getty Images.

I was curious about a new book called Frostbite, by Nicola Twilley, which explores the fascinating industry of refrigerating and freezing foods. The author shares details that boggle the mind such as how the beef industry and the world’s growing population birthed the invention of commercial refrigeration as we know it today. And in the home setting, how plastic salad bags have been designed as chambers in which greens can survive cold storage before they get to our fridge.

Manufactured cold storage, she says, has become the essential hidden step today between farm and fork. Cold has always been a mystery, and the world’s great minds set out to understand it. British scientist and philosopher Sir Francis Bacon was performing a series of experiments with ice in early 1626. He stuffed a hen with snow near Highgate, England to test the effects of cold on meat, and caught a chill that developed into bronchitis. Within a week, he died.

Big thought: There is no such thing as cold because cold is the absence of heat. Cooling is simply transferring heat elsewhere. In your home fridge, the compressor, the condenser, the evaporator, and a little coil of copper capillary tubing—these are what make our refrigerator cold. And they are an ‘’engineering marvel,’’ Twilley says.

Without them, food rots. Corn is less sweet. Celery becomes drier. The BBC tackled this subject in a 2017 documentary titled After Life, showing how bacteria and fungi attack the weakening state of unrefrigerated food. Before refrigeration, people figured out a way to preserve food, whether drying meat in the sun, or salting and sugaring it, turning milk into cheese, and cabbage into kimchi or sauerkraut, but in the end these products do not taste like the original. So there always has been this desire to hold fresh food in a state of limbo for as long as possible.

Harry Gottlieb, Filling the Ice House, 1934, oil on canvas. Smithsonian American Art Museum.

According to the National Museum of American History, early cold storage systems in America were located underground.

A seven-foot pit was found at Jamestown and believed to be modeled after an English-style of ice pit. A hut was most likely built over the pit to trap cold air and help preserve perishable items like meat, packed in ice and straw for insulation.

The ice harvesting industry in America took off in the early 1800s when Frederic Tudor distributed ice from frozen New England ponds to the rest of the country. In ice harvesting, horses pulled plow-like ice cutters across frozen lakes and ponds. And fresh ice kept beer cold, fish fresh, and it amused visitors to America with ice cream and frozen confections.

By 1879, 8 million tons of natural American ice was harvested and shipped to warmer climates like New Orleans with its cocktail culture. In 1907, New York City relied on natural ice. But in the 1930s, polluted waters and the knowledge that germs didn’t die by freezing, paved the way for manufactured ice and making fresh food safer to eat.

French Silk Pie. A delightful refrigerator pie, and the recipe is below.

The iceman cometh…with the ice

Many American households had been storing perishable food in an insulated "icebox" made of wood and lined with tin or zinc. It was kept cool with a large block of ice ordered from one of the ice companies and stored inside. But iceboxes were messy because ice melted.

The first American refrigerator, not dependent on ice, was the General Electric Monitor top refrigerator, introduced in 1927. By the 1930s, even as America was still in the midst of the Great Depression, many people traded in their old iceboxes for new roomier refrigerators. Two factors helped the new fridge take off: It was unthinkable during the Depression to throw away food, and in 1935, New Deal loans encouraged Americans to make the switch to electric.

General Electric’s Monitor refrigerator from the 1930s in the Smithsonian museum's collection. The name comes from its resemblance to the 1860s warship, the USS Monitor. The fridge's exposed compressor looks like a ship's gun turret.

Left, 1920s icebox customers would leave a card in their windows to tell the iceman what size block of ice they wanted delivered—25, 50, 75, or 100 pounds. From the Smithsonian collection. On the right, women delivering ice during World War I, 1918. National Archives.

My diving deeply into a book like Frostbite satisfies my curiosity, but at the end of the day, I realize chilling and freezing food to extend its shelf life isn’t effective unless you know how to do it well.

Here are my favorite tricks:

I never refrigerate tomatoes. It changes their texture and makes them tough and mealy. Place tomatoes from the garden or store upside-down on their shoulders in your kitchen window to grow more fragrant until you have time to eat them. Open the package of cherry tomatoes and dump them into a shallow dish to place on the counter or windowsill.

To keep bagged salad fresh longer, I remove it from the bag. Dump it onto a kitchen towel first, shake off the extra water, then place it in a fresh Ziploc with a layer of paper towels on top. Seal and pop in the fridge. Salad in the plastic boxes lasts longer than the bags. To keep them even fresher, I lay a dry piece of paper towels on top of the greens before resealing, which absorbs the condensation. (And to keep pre-made sandwiches fresh in the fridge, cover them with damp paper towel. Details, details!)

I parcel ground beef and turkey into smaller portions. And I use it within one day of purchase, then freeze the rest in 8-ounce portions for soup or chili. Press into 4-ounce patties separated by parchment for future burgers. Roll into meatballs and freeze on a sheet pan until hard, then pop into a gallon Ziploc bag.

I don’t freeze chicken on the bone. It always tastes like the bone or worse. Some people say it tastes ‘’bloody.’’ But I do freeze boneless chicken thighs and breasts for up to six months. Overwrap them by placing the store packaging in a Ziploc bag to prevent freezer burn.

My favorite containers for freezing soup are heat-tempered glass jars like canning jars, plastic deli containers with snap-on lids, and empty Talenti gelato containers. Leave a 1/2-inch space at the top for the contents to expand.

And yes, if you have an old-fashioned ice cube tray, fill it with homemade pesto, homemade tomato sauce, chicken stock, bits of flavor you can freeze and then pop into quart-size Ziplocs.

For baking, bars and brownies freeze best right in the pan. I cover them first with waxed paper and then with foil. Use a Sharpie to write the contents on the top. You can freeze unfrosted cake layers or batches of baked cookies in gallon Ziplocs. Anything dense and rich—ice cream cakes, homemade rolls, and muffins—freezes well. But never freeze anything with whipped cream or meringue.

Lastly, don’t freeze and forget. Storage is one thing, but usage is the other. Label packages, have some system where things go in the freezer, and try to use up your baked goods and vegetables in less than three months and meats in less than six.

What are your best tips for freezing and chilling?

About the time that GE was marketing home refrigerators, a chocolate icebox pie would take America by storm. French Silk Pie was popularized in 1951 when Betty Lou Winquest Cooper of Kensington, Maryland, won the $1000 ‘’best in class’’ pie award at the Pillsbury Bake-Off. This rich and velvety chocolate icebox pie, a recipe she had received from a friend’s mother growing up in Nebraska, would forever be the most decadent refrigerator pie.

Enjoy. Keep cool. And did you see this milestone issue of 300 newsletters written on Substack!

- xo, Anne

Book Tour Updates - Two Weeks til Pub Date!

I am thrilled my new book, Baking in the American South, will be published Sept. 3. It’s been years in the making of this book, and I can’t wait until it is out in stores and you receive your copy. Thank you for being such great cheerleaders. And I want you to know that this isn’t just a book for Southerners. It is a book for anyone who loves to bake or who wants to know more about the culture and baking of the South.

Just last week, I’ve learned that Lexington, Kentucky, pastry chef and author Stella Parks of Bravetart fame will join me in conversation at my Nov. 20 signing at Joseph-Beth in Lexington. I’ll be at Octavia Books in New Orleans with local legend Poppy Tooker on Sept. 17. And Savannah’s famed pastry chef Cheryl Day joins me in conversation in Savannah on Oct. 8. Joining us will be longtime Savannah food writer Martha Nesbit and owner of Mrs. Wilkes Boarding House, Marcia Thompson. Each stop along the way, I will speak with locals and feature local recipes.

For Paid Subscribers: I just told my Paid Subscribers that I’ll be gifting three copies of my new book to some lucky folks on pub day. It’s not too late to pre-order a copy if you haven’t already. And it’s never too late to become a Paid Subscriber to Between the Layers!

Here’s the complete Book Tour!

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THE RECIPE:

French Silk Pie

I baked this pie while testing my new cookbook and realized it isn’t that rich or chocolatey compared to what we bake today. So I doubled the amount of chocolate! And, today we worry more about eating raw eggs than they did in the 1950s. So I adapted Betty’s winning recipe with a trick I learned by reading Joanna Gaines—supposedly this pie is her family’s favorite, too. She puts the eggs and sugar over the heat and whisks until they hit 160ºF, takes them off the heat and proceeds. The eggs are sufficiently cooked, and the pie rightfully earns its rich and creamy name.

Serves 8

Bake: 25 minutes for the crust

• 2 large eggs

• 2/3 cup (135 grams) granulated sugar

• 2 ounces unsweetened chocolate, chopped

• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract

• 1/4 teaspoon salt

• 6 tablespoons (3 ounces) unsalted butter, at room temperature

• 1 9-inch pie crust, completely pre-baked (see Note)

• 1 cup heavy cream for garnish

• 4 ounces semisweet chocolate for garnish

1. Beat the eggs lightly in a medium stainless steel bowl, and whisk in the sugar until well combined and lemon-colored. Fill a medium saucepan that the bowl can rest on top with 1 inch of water. Bring to a simmer over medium heat, and whisk until the egg and sugar mixture reaches 160ºF on an instant-read thermometer, 5 to 7 minutes. Remove the bowl from the heat, and stir in the chocolate, vanilla, and salt until smooth until the chocolate melts. Set aside to cool at room temperature 20 minutes.

2. Meanwhile, beat the butter with a whisk or electric mixer until soft. Fold into the chocolate mixture, cover, and chill while you bake the crust.

3. Completely pre-bake the pie crust, and set aside to cool. See directions below.

4. Beat the cream in a large bowl with an electric mixer on high power until nearly stiff peaks, 2 to 3 minutes. Shave the chocolate using a vegetable peeler.

5. To assemble, remove the chocolate filling from the refrigerator and turn into the baked pie crust, and smooth the top with a spatula. Spoon the whipped cream over the top and garnish with the chocolate shavings. Slice and serve. Store leftovers in the fridge.

Note: To pre-bake a pie crust, place a rack in the center of the oven, and preheat the oven to 375ºF. Line the frozen or chilled pie crust with a crumpled 12-inch square of parchment paper. Pour in 1 cup of dried beans or pie weights. Shake the pan gently to distribute the beans or weights around the pan. Place in the oven, and bake until the edges started to brown, 15 minutes. Remove the pie from the oven and carefully lift out the parchment paper (with beans or weights). Prick holes over the bottom crust with a fork. Return the crust to the oven and bake until the bottom of the crust just begins to brown, 8 to 10 minutes more. Remove to a wire rack to cool.