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SEA-MOSS FARINE
Dessert-spoon of sea-moss farine, quart boiling water; steep a few minutes, sweeten and flavor with lemon (leaving out rinds). This is a very pleasant drink and is good for colds.
A two-line invalid drink built on powdered Irish moss, the seaweed thickener that later became the food industry's carrageenan. The whole thing hinges on getting the moss to actually release its gel, which a few minutes of steeping will not do.
- Dessert-spoonA Victorian dessert-spoon is about two teaspoons, roughly halfway between a teaspoon and a tablespoon. A quart is 4 cups, so this is a very lightly bodied drink.
- Sea-moss farinePrepared, dried and milled Irish moss (Chondrus crispus), sold in the period as a branded invalid food. The nearest modern equivalents are Irish moss powder or carrageen sold for home use; food-grade kappa carrageenan behaves similarly but sets far harder.
- If you only have whole dried mossRinse it well to get the grit and salt out, then simmer 1/2 cup of the dried weed in the quart of water for 15 to 20 minutes and strain. Whole fronds will not give up their gel in a brief steep the way a milled farine does.
- Steeping is the weak instructionCarrageenan needs to be brought near boiling and held there to hydrate and disperse. Whisk the powder into the water off the boil, return it to a bare simmer for 5 to 10 minutes, then strain through a fine sieve to catch any undissolved specks.
- Add the lemon lastAcid degrades carrageenan while it is hot, so juice stirred in early will leave the drink thin. Sweeten during the simmer and add the lemon juice once the liquid is off the heat. The instruction to leave out the rind may simply be to avoid bitterness.
- It will set as it coolsAt this dilution you get a slippery, faintly viscous drink rather than a jelly, which is the point. Chilled overnight it may thicken to a loose gel; thin it with hot water or serve it warm.
- YieldA quart, so four generous cups, more than a single serving.
- On the health claimThe soothing effect is mechanical, a viscous liquid coating a sore throat. It is not a treatment for a cold or a chest infection.
Irish moss is a red seaweed harvested off the Atlantic coasts of Ireland, Brittany and New England, and its use as a sickroom thickener came to America with Irish immigration in the middle of the nineteenth century; the beds off Scituate, Massachusetts, supported a commercial mossing trade for generations. "Farine" simply means meal or flour, and by the time Buckeye Cookery appeared in 1877 the bleached, dried, powdered product was a branded grocery item sold alongside arrowroot, tapioca and cornstarch as an invalid food. The logic of the whole "Food for the Sick" chapter is bland, easily swallowed, mildly nourishing liquids, and Irish moss suited it perfectly: nearly tasteless, cheap, and capable of giving water enough body to feel like sustenance. The gelling agent the cooks were unknowingly extracting is carrageenan, which is now refined industrially and turns up in ice cream, deli meats and non-dairy milks.