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Orange Ice
Boil three-quarters of a pound of sugar in one quart of water; when cool add the juice of six oranges; steep the rinds in a little water, strain, and flavor to taste with it. The juice and rind of one or two lemons added to the orange is a great improvement. Freeze like ice-cream.
A straightforward sugar-syrup sorbet whose only difficulty is that the original assumes a hand-crank freezer packed in ice and salt. The proportions are sound and need almost no adjustment.
- The sugar, measuredThree-quarters of a pound of granulated sugar is about 1 3/4 cups. With one quart of water that is a syrup of about 26 Brix, but the juice dilutes it to somewhere nearer 22, a little leaner than the usual modern target for a scoopable sorbet.
- Boil briefly, then chill hardBring the sugar and water just to a boil to dissolve, no longer, or you will reduce the water and end up with a syrup too heavy to freeze properly. Chill it to refrigerator temperature before adding juice; a warm mix churns badly and dulls the citrus.
- Six orangesThe oranges available in the 1870s were probably smaller and sharper than a modern navel. Six of today's oranges yield roughly 2 to 2 1/2 cups of juice; aim for about 1 1/2 to 2 cups and taste, adding lemon to bring the acid up rather than more orange.
- Steeping the rindsPare only the coloured zest with a peeler and steep it in a little hot water off the heat for fifteen to twenty minutes, then strain. Any white pith carried over turns the ice bitter.
- Add juice off the heatNever boil the juice. Heat drives off the volatile oils that make the ice taste of fresh orange and leaves a cooked, marmalade note.
- Strain everythingPass the finished mixture through a fine sieve. Pulp and membrane freeze into fibrous specks that a churn will not break down.
- "Freeze like ice-cream"In the 1870s that meant a pail packed with crushed ice and rock salt, cranked while scraping the frozen layer off the cylinder wall. An ice-cream machine does the same job; failing that, freeze in a shallow pan and whisk or fork it thoroughly every thirty minutes until firm, about three hours.
- YieldRoughly 1 1/2 quarts, serving eight to ten as a small course. It is best within a day or two, after which the ice coarsens.
Water ices reached American cookbooks well before mechanical refrigeration, and their spread depended on the commercial ice trade: by the 1870s ice cut from northern lakes in winter and stored in insulated houses was cheap enough that a middle-class household could pack a freezer pail in summer. That is why Buckeye Cookery, an Ohio book aimed squarely at practical housekeepers, can carry a whole section of ices and ice-creams without comment. The technique here is older still, essentially the sugar-syrup-and-citrus formula that had circulated in English and French confectionery manuals since the eighteenth century. The instruction to steep the rinds separately reflects a period understanding that the peel oil, not the juice, carries most of the orange aroma, a point that modern pastry work has largely borne out.