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Raspberry Sherbet
One box of red raspberries, three cups of sugar, three lemons, one quart of milk, one cup of cream. Put sugar and lemon juice and grated rind over the berries. After allowing to stand awhile, squeeze through a cheese-cloth bag, add cream and milk, and freeze.
— Mrs. George W. Loud
A late-19th-century milk sherbet: fruit and lemon macerated in sugar, strained, then slackened with dairy and churned. The proportions are sound, but two things need explaining before you start — what a "box" of berries is, and what the lemon juice does to the milk.
- One box of raspberries"Box" most often meant a quart berry box, which would hold roughly 4 cups, somewhere in the region of 12 oz to a pound of fruit; pint boxes were also sold. Two 6-oz supermarket clamshells are close enough.
- The lemon and milk will curdleThree lemons' juice against a quart of milk guarantees visible curdling in the bowl. This is expected in an old milk sherbet: the sugar and the churning break the curds down into a fine grain, and freezing hides the rest. Combine everything cold, whisk well, and churn immediately rather than letting the mix sit and separate further.
- Sugar is structuralThree cups looks extreme, and it is sweet by modern taste, but sugar is what keeps a dairy-and-water base from freezing into a solid brick. Cut it much at all and the sherbet will come out icier and harder.
- Squeezing the bagA cheesecloth bag strains out the seeds, which is the point. Twist hard and expect to leave pulp behind.
- FreezingThe original means a hand-crank freezer packed with cracked ice and rock salt. An ice cream maker does the same work in 20-30 minutes. Without one, freeze in a shallow pan and break up the mix with a fork every 30 minutes for about three hours.
- Yield and servingRoughly 2 quarts, serving ten to twelve in small glasses. It sets hard; move it to the refrigerator for 10-15 minutes before scooping.
- Grated rindTake only the colored zest of the three lemons; white pith carries bitterness, which matters less here since the mixture is strained, but is unpleasant if any is left in.
Sherbet in American cookbooks of this period rarely meant the water ice we now expect from the word — it covered a whole family of frozen fruit mixtures, some water-based, some, like this one, thinned with milk and cream. A quart of milk and a single cup of cream cost less than the cream an ice cream demanded, and the acid of the lemon gave a light, sharp result that was thought suitable for hot weather. Books of this kind are made up of contributed receipts signed by the woman who supplied them, and frozen desserts appear often. That Mrs. Loud gives no churning time at all is typical of the genre.