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Lemon Water Ice
Rub the rind of six lemons upon twelve large lumps of sugar, squeeze over them the strained juice, add half a pint of water and a pint of syrup, made by boiling three-quarters of a pound of sugar in three-quarters of a pint of water until the sugar is dissolved. Put all together into a jug, and leave it for an hour or two. Then mix, strain, and freeze in the usual way. Serve in glasses. The ice will be much improved if, when it is beginning to set, the whites of three eggs, beaten to a firm froth, and mixed with six ounces of powdered sugar, are stirred into it. The preparation should be left in the ice until wanted. Sufficient for ten persons.
The lemon base itself is straightforward late-Victorian confectionery, but the finishing step folds uncooked egg white into a mixture that is never heated and is then held for hours at freezer temperature.
- Why it failsThree raw egg whites are stirred into the part-frozen ice and the ice is "left in the ice until wanted." Nothing in the process reaches a temperature that would deal with Salmonella, and freezing preserves rather than destroys it. A current recipe using pasteurised whites or a cooked syrup meringue should be used instead.
- Imperial measuresThe pint here is 20 fl oz, so the half pint of water is 10 fl oz and the pint of syrup 20 fl oz. Three-quarters of a pound of sugar (12 oz) in three-quarters of an imperial pint of water (15 fl oz) gives a syrup of roughly four parts sugar to five parts water by weight.
- Lumps of sugarA Victorian lump was cut from a sugar loaf and could be larger and less regular than a modern cube, so the quantity is genuinely imprecise. The lumps here serve as an abrasive surface for the rind as well as sweetening.
- Rubbing the rindDragging sugar over the lemon peel ruptures the oil cells and draws the zest oil into the sugar. This is the same principle as the oleo-saccharum used in punch, and it is the reason the ice tastes of lemon rather than merely of acid.
- "Freeze in the usual way"In Victorian practice this meant a freezing pot packed in a pail of crushed ice and coarse salt, worked with a spatula or scraper as it set; by the later part of the century a patent crank freezer might equally be meant.
- Yield"Sufficient for ten persons" reflects the small stemmed glasses in which water ices were served between courses, not a dessert-bowl portion.
Water ices reached English cookery books by way of Italy and France, and by the time this book was compiled they had settled into a familiar repertoire: lemon, orange, raspberry, currant, each built on a sugar syrup. The addition of whipped whites and powdered sugar at the setting stage is broadly what distinguished a plain water ice from what Victorian books called a sorbet, lightened to a foam and sometimes handed round mid-dinner. That a household book could assume access to enough ice and salt to freeze ten portions reflects the Victorian ice trade, which shipped lake ice from Norway and North America into British ports in bulk through the second half of the century.