Home › Ice Creams and Ices › Water Ices
Water Ices
Water ices are made of the juices of ripe fruits mixed with syrup and frozen; and it must be remembered that if the juices are sweetened excessively they will not freeze. It is therefore necessary to test them with an instrument called a saccharometer. To do this, put the mixture prepared for freezing in a tumbler, place the saccharometer gently in it: if it is mixed correctly for freezing with powder it will stick to the highest red mark; for freezing with ice and salt to the lowest red mark. To make it sink, add water to the mixture; to make it rise, add syrup. These remarks apply also to ice creams, ice puddings, and all drinks which are to be frozen. For water ices clarified sugar should be used; and this may be made by boiling for ten minutes, and skimming thoroughly, a quart of water with 3 pounds of sugar and 1/2 the white of an egg well whisked. Having prepared the mixture and also ascertained its strength, put it into an ice-pot. Place it in the ice-pail, and surround it with ice which has been broken almost to powder and mixed with salt and a little saltpetre. Work the freezer rapidly for ten minutes; then remove the ice from the sides of the freezer with the ice-spattle, and work it again till it is stiff and smooth. Put it into the mould, and leave it in ice mixed with salt and saltpetre till it is to be served. To turn it out, wipe it with a cloth, dip it in cold water for a minute, and wipe it dry; lift off the ends of the mould, and with the fingers push the ice upon its dish.
This is a master method rather than a single flavour: a clarified syrup, a density check, and the churning and moulding routine that applied to every water ice in the book. Most of it translates directly to a modern machine once the vocabulary is decoded.
- The hinge: sugar densityThe warning is the important part -- too much sugar and the mixture will never set, too little and it freezes to a solid brick. Fruit juices vary enormously in their own sugar, which is why the density is measured rather than assumed.
- The saccharometerA confectioner's hydrometer, floated in the liquid; the "red marks" were etched on that particular tool and mean nothing on any instrument you can buy, so treat the instruction as unusable as written. A refractometer or a Baume syrup hydrometer does the same job, and churned sorbet generally wants roughly 25-30 percent sugar by weight in the finished mixture.
- "Freezing with powder"The higher reading refers to freezing with a proprietary chemical freezing powder, sold in the period and generally based on nitrate salts dissolved in water. Such mixtures did not necessarily reach a lower temperature than a well-salted ice bath; the method is obsolete in any case, so work to the ice-and-salt figure, which is close to what a domestic machine achieves.
- Clarified sugarA quart of water to 3 lb sugar is a heavy syrup, though well short of saturation. The half egg white was there to raise a scum and carry off impurities from the less thoroughly refined sugar of the period; with modern granulated sugar it is unnecessary, and ten minutes at an uncovered boil will concentrate the syrup beyond the bare proportions given.
- Ice-pot, ice-pail, spattleThe ice-pot is a lidded metal canister (a sorbetiere), the pail the wooden bucket packed around it, the spattle a long-handled scraper. The whole apparatus is a hand-cranked ice cream freezer without the gearing.
- Ice and salt proportionsThe original gives none. Roughly one part coarse or rock salt to three parts finely crushed ice by volume brings the bath well below freezing. The saltpetre is there to depress the freezing point still further and stays entirely outside the food.
- TimingTen minutes of hard cranking, a scrape-down, then more working is right for a well-salted pot; in a domestic machine expect 20-30 minutes to reach a stiff, smooth texture. Stop while it still holds a soft ripple -- overrun churning turns a water ice grainy.
- Moulding and turning outCold water, not hot, for the dip: a moment is enough to release the ice without melting the surface detail. A moulded ice needs several hours packed in ice and salt (or a few hours in a freezer) to become firm enough to unmould cleanly.
- YieldThe syrup as written makes roughly 1 3/4 quarts once the sugar is dissolved and evaporation allowed for, enough for several batches of ice; a quart of finished water ice serves six as a small course.