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Orange Sherbet
1 quart water, 1 pound sugar, 4 oranges, juice of 1 lemon, whites of 3 eggs. Grate the rind of oranges and lemon in a bowl, and add their juice. Now make a syrup of the sugar and water, to which add 1 tablespoonful of gelatine, having been soaked in cold water. When syrup is cold pour it on the grated rind and juice and strain into freezer and freeze. When half frozen beat up the whites of 3 eggs and add to the sherbet. Continue freezing until hard.
A late-19th-century water ice of the plain syrup-and-citrus type, thickened with gelatine and lightened with beaten egg white. The finishing step is the problem: the whites go in raw, and nothing in the process ever heats them.
- Why the caution standsThe whites of three eggs are beaten and stirred into a half-frozen mixture, then frozen hard. No stage reaches a temperature that would kill Salmonella, and freezing does not destroy it. Cold syrup poured over cold juice offers no protection either.
- Freezing is not a kill stepHard freezing suspends bacterial growth without reducing the existing load, so a contaminated white remains contaminated for as long as the sherbet sits in the freezer. If you want a sherbet of this style, use a current recipe.
- "Freezer" means the churnIn this period a "freezer" is an ice-and-salt churn rather than a cold cabinet. "When half frozen" appears to be a texture cue rather than a clock time; no time is given.
- The weightsA pound of sugar is about two and a quarter cups; with a quart of water this gives a fairly light syrup, which is why the gelatine is there to hold the body.
- GelatineA tablespoon of granulated gelatine is roughly one and a third modern envelopes. It is soaked in cold water and dissolved in the hot syrup, and the recipe specifies that the syrup be cold before it is poured on the juice and rind.
- StrainingThe grated rind is there for aroma, and the recipe strains it out before the mixture goes into the freezer.