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Canteloupe Ice
To one quart of melon pulp allow a pound of sugar and a pint of water. Make a syrup of the sugar and water, simmering five minutes. When cold add to the melon pulp and freeze.
A plain water ice in the nineteenth-century mould: fruit pulp, sugar syrup, nothing else. The proportions are sound, but the word "freeze" assumes a hand-cranked churn packed with ice and rock salt, so that is the main thing to translate.
- What "melon pulp" meansRipe cantaloupe flesh pushed through a sieve or blitzed and strained, not chunks. A quart of pulp takes several pounds of whole melon -- roughly two large supermarket cantaloupes, depending on how much rind and seed you lose.
- The syrupA pound of sugar is about 2 1/4 cups; a pint of water is 2 cups. Simmer five minutes only to dissolve and clarify, then chill completely before it meets the fruit, or the pulp will cook and dull.
- FreezingChurn in an ice cream machine until it holds soft ridges, then firm in the freezer. Without a machine, freeze in a shallow metal pan and rake with a fork every 30 minutes for about three hours.
- Sweetness is structuralThe sugar looks heavy but it is what keeps the ice scoopable. Cutting it much below a pound per quart of pulp gives you a solid block of melon-flavoured ice.
- Lift the flavourCantaloupe goes flat when cold. A tablespoon or two of lemon juice and a good pinch of salt in the syrup restores the fruit without reading as either sour or salty.
- Ripeness does all the workThere is nothing here to hide behind. Use melon that smells sweet at the stem end and yields slightly; underripe fruit produces a pale, faintly cucumber-flavoured ice.
- Yield and servingSomething under two quarts, serving eight or so. It is best within a day or two, and softens noticeably faster than a custard ice cream, so serve it straight from the freezer.
Cantaloupe takes its name from Cantalupo, an estate near Rome where the melon is traditionally said to have been grown after seeds arrived from Armenia, though the netted melon Americans call cantaloupe is properly a muskmelon. Water ices of this kind — fruit pulp, sugar syrup, no dairy — were common in American household cookery once natural ice was cheap and widely delivered and the hand-cranked freezer with its bucket of cracked ice and rock salt had become an ordinary piece of kitchen equipment. On formal menus of the period an ice could appear midway through a long dinner, between the heavier courses, in the role a sorbet still occupies. Melons do not keep, and a ripe glut had to be eaten, preserved, or frozen.