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Granito Claret
Put the thin rind of two oranges in half a pint of water. Let it soak for two hours, strain it, and boil the water with half a pound of sugar to a clear syrup. Add the strained juice of six oranges, a cupful of water, and a pint bottle of claret. Put the mixture into wide-mouthed bottles, cork them, and move them round in the ice. As the mixture freezes it should be loosened from the sides of the bottles, and then put into claret-glasses. Sufficient for two pints and a half.
A wine granita, frozen in bottles turned by hand in an ice bath. The method is obsolete but the proportions are sound, and the whole thing works in a freezer with a fork.
- Imperial measuresHalf a pint of water is 10 fl oz (about 285 ml), a pint is 20 fl oz (about 570 ml). Half a pound of sugar is 225 g. The yield of two and a half pints is roughly 1.4 litres.
- A pint bottle of claretClaret is the English term for red Bordeaux. The recipe specifies a pint bottle, i.e. 20 fl oz; a modern 750 ml bottle is about a third more, so either measure out 570 ml and keep the rest, or scale the syrup and juice up by a third.
- Rind means zest only"Thin rind" is the coloured outer peel taken off with a peeler, no white pith, which turns the infusion bitter over a two-hour soak.
- Sugar is structuralAlcohol and sugar both depress the freezing point, which is why this sets as loose crystals rather than a solid block. Cut the sugar and you shift the balance the other way, towards a harder, icier mass; the 225 g is doing work beyond sweetening.
- "Move them round in the ice"The bottles were set in ice (an ice-and-salt freezing mixture was the usual means of getting below freezing point) and rolled back and forth by hand, the frozen layer being loosened from the glass as it formed, as the recipe directs. In a domestic freezer, pour the mixture into a shallow metal tray instead.
- Freezing by forkFreeze the tray uncovered and drag a fork through it every 30 to 40 minutes, breaking up the crystals as they form at the edges. Reckon on three to four hours in total; the texture should be granular, not smooth.
- ServingClaret glasses of the period were small, perhaps 3 to 4 fl oz, so this would stretch to a dozen or so as a between-course ice, or fewer as a dessert. Serve straight from the freezer, as it slumps quickly.
Granito is the Italian name for a granular water ice, and by the late nineteenth century such ices had become a fixture of the English dinner service: a coarse, half-frozen ice served in a small glass between the heavier courses, the same slot occupied by Roman punch and other wine sorbets. There is no dairy in this one at all, only fruit, syrup and wine. Claret was the standard English name for red Bordeaux and had been since the Middle Ages. The bottle-and-ice method described here predates domestic refrigeration entirely; it relies on ice, delivered or drawn from an icehouse, and on the bottles being rolled by hand rather than churned in a freezing pot as one would for ice cream.