Lemon Ice
Make a strong, but sweet lemonade, and after putting it in the freezer, add the whites, beaten to a stiff froth, of two eggs, to one quart of lemonade. It is very nice to cut up peaches or oranges and let them lie in sugar all day and stir into the lemonade, not quite as strong as when made clear; also frozen.
The problem here is the two egg whites, which are folded into a cold mixture and never heated at any point. Everything else in the recipe is a straightforward water ice, but as written the finished dish is a raw-egg preparation.
- Raw egg white, never cookedThe whites go in beaten but uncooked, and the mixture only ever gets colder. Freezing does not kill Salmonella; it suspends it, and the pathogen survives in a frozen dessert for the life of the product.
- Why this was acceptable in 1900Why this was acceptable then -- Eggs in a household kitchen of this period were often locally sourced and used quickly, and uncooked whites in cold dishes were common in cookbooks of the era. Modern shell eggs move through a longer supply chain, and current guidance treats uncooked whites in a no-heat dessert as unsuitable. If you want a frothy lemon ice, use a current recipe built on pasteurized whites or an Italian-meringue method.
- "Put it in the freezer"The freezer meant an ice-and-salt freezing apparatus: an inner canister set in a bucket of ice and coarse salt, in the crank versions scraped and worked as it set. It is a freezing device, not a cold box.
- "Strong, but sweet lemonade"No quantities are given for the lemonade itself, only the proportion of two whites to a quart, so the base cannot be honestly reconstructed. A water ice normally runs sweeter than drinking lemonade, since sugar lowers the freezing point and keeps it from setting into a solid block.
- The fruit variationPeaches or oranges macerated in sugar all day draw out juice and soften the flesh, so the pieces stay chewable rather than freezing into hard chips. The instruction to make the lemonade "not quite as strong" presumably allows for the sweetness the sugared fruit brings with it.
Water ices reached American cookbooks well before ice cream became a household matter, because they need nothing but fruit, sugar, water and ice, and lemon was the standard flavour: shelf-stable, cheap by the dozen, and sharp enough to survive the dulling effect of cold on the palate. The beaten egg white is a trick borrowed from confectioners to give a water ice a lighter, whiter, more velvety body — the same logic behind the sorbets and "sherbets" of the period, where a little froth stood in for the richness of cream.