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Frozen Kumquats
Make a syrup as for ices (see Introductory Recipes) and add to it the sliced kumquats in proportion according to taste. Let stand till cool, when freeze. Orange, lemon, or lime juice may be added.
The preserve may be frozen, diluted but slightly as it comes from the jar, or an ice or ice cream or custard made with kumquat syrup.
A sketch rather than a recipe: a sugar syrup, sliced kumquats, and a freezer. The proportions are left to the cook, so the useful work is in fixing the syrup and the churn.
- The syrup for icesPeriod "syrup for ices" is often something close to equal weights of sugar and water, boiled just until clear and cooled, though proportions differ from book to book. For a water ice that stays scoopable, aim for roughly 1 cup sugar to 2 cups liquid once the fruit and juice are counted in; much less sugar and it freezes to a brick, much more and it never sets.
- Preparing the kumquatsKumquats are eaten skin and all, the rind sweet and the flesh sharp. Slice them thin crosswise and pick out every seed, which is bitter and will not soften in a frozen mixture. About 1 lb of fruit to a quart of syrup gives a pronounced flavour.
- "Freeze" means a salt-and-ice churnAt the time this was written that meant a hand-crank freezer packed with cracked ice and rock salt, about three parts ice to one of salt, turned steadily. An ice-cream machine does the same job; failing that, freeze in a shallow metal pan and rake with a fork every 30 minutes for a granita texture.
- Added citrus juiceThe orange, lemon or lime juice is there for acidity, not bulk. Two or three tablespoons per quart lifts the flavour; a great deal more acid, or any spirit, will depress the freezing point and leave a slush.
- "The preserve" lineThis refers to kumquats already put up whole in heavy syrup, sold in jars then as now. Those are far sweeter than fresh fruit in fresh syrup, hence the instruction to dilute only slightly before churning.
- The custard variantIf you take the last suggestion and build a custard, cook the eggs and dairy to 170-175F and cool it completely before adding the kumquat syrup. Adding acidic citrus to a warm custard will curdle it.
- YieldA quart of finished ice, serving six to eight. Let it sit 10 minutes at room temperature before serving; heavily sugared citrus ices freeze hard in a modern domestic freezer.
Kumquats reached Western gardens in the 1840s, generally credited to the plant collector Robert Fortune, whose name was long attached to the genus Fortunella; botanists now usually file them under Citrus. The name comes from Cantonese gam gwat, golden orange, and the fruit's peculiarity, that the peel is the sweet part and the pulp the sour, is exactly what makes it good in a syrup where both are sliced together. By the time this book was compiled, kumquats were being grown commercially in Florida and the Gulf states and turning up in American preserving manuals, which is why the compiler could assume a reader had a jar of them on the shelf. Filing the fruit under "The Orange" reflects the loose citrus taxonomy of household books of the era, and the confidence that a cook already owned a salt-and-ice freezer and knew what a syrup for ices was without being told twice.