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Apple Water Ices
These may be made by more than one method. Simmer till tender a quart of apples, pared and cored; when cold put through a sieve. Have ready a syrup made according to Introductory Recipes, using one and a half pints; mixing with the strained apple and juice of two lemons. Freeze. Or the apple may be added to plain cider instead of to a syrup or the cider itself frozen, flavouring as liked. Preserved or stewed apples may be frozen by packing in salt and ice five or six hours, or apple sauce, thick and flavoured with lemon or sherry, may be frozen. The sauce may be thinned as first directed and a softened tablespoon of gelatine added just as the apples are removed from the fire, stirring it till dissolved. This gives the mousse effect.
A sorbet base of sieved stewed apple, sugar syrup and lemon, with several variations sketched rather than spelled out. The important variable the original leaves to you is the sugar concentration, which controls whether the finished ice is scoopable or a solid block.
- A quart of applesA dry quart of pared and cored apples is roughly 1 1/4 lb prepared fruit, or about four medium apples. A tart cooking variety will carry more flavour against this much sugar than a sweet eating apple.
- The syrupWithout the book's own Introductory Recipes we cannot know the strength; period stock syrups run anywhere from equal parts sugar and water to two parts sugar to one of water. One and a half pints of any of them is a great deal of sugar for 1 1/4 lb of apple; taste the mix before freezing and hold back some syrup if it is cloying. Under-sweetened ices freeze rock hard, over-sweetened ones never firm up at all.
- SievingA food mill or a blender followed by a fine sieve does in a minute what the original expects of a wooden spoon and a hair sieve. The purée should be smooth enough to feel no grain on the tongue.
- CiderCider here may mean either fresh unfermented apple juice or the fermented drink; the recipe does not say which. Either works, but fermented cider freezes softer and will need less dilution.
- "Freeze"Packing in salt and ice for five or six hours without churning is the still-freezing method. In an ice cream machine the same mixture takes 20 to 30 minutes. Without a machine, freeze in a shallow pan and rake with a fork every 30 minutes for three hours.
- The gelatineA tablespoon of granulated gelatine is close to one and a half modern envelopes, about 3/8 oz. Soften it in a little cold water first, then stir into the hot apple until fully dissolved; added to a cold purée it will string.
- YieldSyrup, purée and lemon juice together come to nearer a quart and a half of mixture. Ripen it in the freezer an hour before serving and let it stand a few minutes at room temperature to soften.
Water ices — fruit purée or juice frozen with sugar syrup and no dairy — were well established in England and America by the late nineteenth century, when they were standard fare at a formal dinner, served between courses or as a light finish. Apples had the advantage of storing through the winter, when the summer soft fruits used for finer ices were long gone. The last line, adding softened gelatine for "the mousse effect," reflects the period's fondness for gelatine as a texture agent in everything from jellies to frozen puddings; it does the work an egg white or a modern stabiliser would do now, keeping the ice smooth rather than crystalline.