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Turkish Sherbet
Boil two pounds of loaf sugar with a pint and a half of water to a clear syrup. Skim carefully, and pour it into a bowl. When cold, stir it into a pint and a half of strained lemon-juice, and a quart of white veal stock, clear and strong. Serve in glasses.
A savoury-sweet cold drink rather than a frozen dessert, and the veal stock is not a misprint. The whole thing hinges on the stock being fat-free and crystal clear, because any grease will set into flecks the moment the drink chills.
- Loaf sugarLoaf sugar was cut from a hard refined cone; ordinary granulated sugar is the direct replacement, weight for weight. Two pounds is about 4 1/2 cups.
- Imperial measuresThis is a British book, so a pint is 20 fl oz and a quart 40 fl oz. In US cups: about 3 1/2 cups water, 3 1/2 cups lemon juice, and a little under 5 cups stock.
- That much lemon juiceThree and a half cups of strained juice means roughly 16 to 24 lemons depending on size. Strain twice through a fine sieve; pulp will cloud the finished glass.
- A clear syrupDissolve the sugar over low heat and do not let it colour. Skim the grey foam that rises, since it carries the impurities that would otherwise dull the drink.
- The stockUse a light veal stock, unsalted or barely salted, made from bones and knuckle rather than browned trimmings. Chill it, lift off every trace of set fat, and clarify with lightly beaten egg white if it is at all cloudy.
- Everything cold before mixingCool the syrup and the stock separately and completely. Hot syrup poured onto lemon juice dulls the flavour, and warm stock will not combine cleanly.
- Taste as you goAs written this is very sharp and quite savoury. Add the lemon juice gradually to the syrup and stop when the balance suits you, rather than committing all three cups at once.
- Yield and servingAbout 3 quarts, enough for a dozen or more small glasses. Serve very cold, and keep refrigerated; a meat-based drink should be finished the day it is made.
Sherbet reaches English through Turkish şerbet, from Arabic sharba, a drink, and in Ottoman practice it meant a sweetened fruit or flower cordial served cold and unfermented, a forerunner of both the frozen sherbet and the modern soft drink. The veal stock here belongs less to Istanbul than to the Victorian kitchen's fondness for restorative meat drinks: nourishing beef teas, calf's-foot jellies and clear consommés served cold to invalids and at late suppers. The compilers were working in a period when the line between a cold soup, a jelly and a beverage was thin, and a clear veal stock was valued for the body and gloss it gave a liquid rather than for any pronounced meaty flavour. Whether any Turkish cook would have recognised the result is another matter.