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Ices, Sugar Clarified For
Dissolve six pounds of sugar in four quarts of water. Let it then come slowly to a boil; add the white of an egg, well beaten, to the water, and boil ten minutes, when it may be strained and bottled. It is difficult to freeze ices which are over sweet.
This is a stock syrup for ice-making rather than a finished dish: a batch of clarified sugar solution to be kept bottled and measured into fruit purées and custards. Two things matter — the egg-white clarification is now largely redundant, and the syrup is lighter than most modern sorbet recipes assume.
- Clarification is obsoleteClarification is largely obsolete -- The egg white was there to coagulate around the impurities in Victorian loaf and moist sugar and carry them to the surface as scum. Modern granulated sugar is refined to around 99.9 per cent sucrose and throws little or no scum, so the egg can usually be omitted and the syrup simply dissolved and boiled.
- If you do clarifyThe beaten white should go into the cold or barely warm water with the sugar, not into liquid that is already boiling — dropped into hot syrup it sets into shreds instead of forming a raft. Strain through muslin, not a sieve.
- The strength of the syrupSix pounds of sugar to four quarts of water gives, in imperial measure, 6 lb sugar to about 10 lb water, roughly 37 per cent sugar by weight (nearer 43 per cent if the quarts are read as American) — a light syrup, somewhere around 21-23 degrees Baumé. Most modern sorbet formulas call for a denser stock syrup (equal weights of sugar and water, or heavier), so if you substitute this for a 1:1 syrup you will be adding less sugar than the recipe intends.
- Scaling downFull quantity gives something over five quarts. A tenth of it — 10 oz (about 1 1/3 cups) sugar to roughly 1 2/3 cups water — makes a manageable jar. The ten-minute boil is for skimming rather than concentration; at this dilution very little water is driven off.
- Keeping itAt 43 per cent sugar this syrup is not concentrated enough to be shelf-stable and will grow mould in a warm cupboard. Bottle it hot into clean jars, cool, and keep it refrigerated; use within two or three weeks.
- The closing line is the useful partSugar depresses the freezing point, and an over-sweet mixture will stay slushy however long it is churned. For a sorbet, aim for a finished mix in the region of 26-30 per cent sugar by weight; below about 20 per cent it freezes hard and icy instead.
- "Ices" here means both kindsIn this period the word covers water ices and cream ices alike. This syrup suits both, but in a custard-based ice the eggs and cream also affect the set, so the syrup is added by taste and by measurement of the whole mix rather than by rule.