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Sugar, Clarified, for Fresh-Water Ices
Break two pounds of refined sugar into small pieces, and put these into a saucepan with two pints of cold water. Let the sugar dissolve, then add a tea-spoonful of white of egg lightly beaten. As the scum rises take it off, and keep the sugar boiling until the scum ceases to rise. When it is quite clear, strain it through muslin, and it will be fit for use. If liked, it may be put into a bottle and closely stoppered. It will keep for some time. Time to boil, ten minutes.
A confectioner's stock syrup, kept bottled and drawn on whenever ices were wanted. Modern sugar arrives clean, so most of the work here is now optional — but the proportions still matter, because sugar concentration is what decides whether an ice freezes soft or solid.
- The measurements in modern termsTwo pounds of sugar is about 900 g. Two imperial pints is 40 fl oz, roughly 1.14 litres or 4¾ US cups — not 4 cups, which is the trap if you read "pints" as American.
- Refined sugar has changedThe instruction to break the sugar up points to loaf or cone sugar, which the cook had to reduce to pieces, and which could still carry faint colour and traces of impurity. Today's granulated sugar is essentially pure sucrose; the egg-white raft has little or nothing to lift out, so you can generally skip the clarifying and simply dissolve and boil.
- Why egg white at allAlbumen coagulates as the syrup heats, trapping suspended impurities and carrying them to the surface as scum. It must go in while the liquid is cold or barely warm, as here — added to hot syrup it sets instantly in threads and clarifies nothing.
- Boil gently, and do not stirA hard rolling boil breaks up the scum raft and drives it back through the syrup. Bring it slowly to a bare simmer and lift the scum with a skimmer as it gathers.
- Ten minutes is a guide, not a targetBoiling concentrates the syrup, and every extra minute makes it heavier. If you want the strength the book assumes, stop as soon as it runs clear; professional confectioners could gauge syrup density with a saccharometer, though household books like this one generally gave a time instead.
- StrainingMuslin is cheesecloth — use several layers, or a coffee filter, and let it drip rather than squeezing, which pushes fine sediment through.
- Keeping itA sugar syrup at this strength is not a preserve. "It will keep for some time" meant a cool larder and frequent use; store it in a sterilised bottle in the refrigerator and discard at the first sign of cloudiness or mould.
- Yield and useRoughly 1.5 litres of syrup once boiling has driven off some water, enough for several batches of water ice. Sugar depresses the freezing point, so a fruit ice made with too much of it will never set firm, and one made with too little will freeze to a solid block — taste the finished mixture cold, before churning, and expect it to seem slightly too sweet.
Clarified sugar syrup was a foundation of the Victorian ice-making repertoire: water ices and fruit ices were commonly made by combining fruit juice or purée with a measured quantity of stock syrup, and a well-run kitchen might keep a bottle standing ready. The egg-white method belongs to an older confectionery tradition, when sugar reached the cook as a loaf whose whiteness varied with the refiner, and clarifying was a genuine necessity rather than a formality — the same technique was used for jellies and consommés on the same principle of a protein raft. That a middle-class household book of the period could assume access to ice at all reflects the nineteenth-century trade in harvested lake ice and the spread of ice-houses and freezing pots, which brought a luxury once confined to grand houses within reach of anyone who could afford a pail and freezing salt.