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Frozen Oranges
Pare oranges to the juice-pulp; halve, core, seed, and slice. To each quart of fruit add one cup of sugar and freeze.
Barely a paragraph, and most of what it assumes is the equipment. This is a still-frozen orange ice in the older sense: cut fruit and sugar packed into a churn, not a purée.
- "Freeze" means a crank freezerIn a book of this period the instruction assumes a wooden bucket churn packed with crushed ice and rock salt, turned until the mixture stiffens. A modern 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.
- Pare to the juice-pulpThis is the hinge. Remove not just the peel but all the white pith and the tough membrane, so only the juice-bearing flesh goes in. Any albedo left behind turns bitter and stringy once frozen, and frozen membrane is unpleasantly chewy.
- A quart of fruitMeasured as prepared sliced pulp and juice, roughly 4 cups, which is about 6 to 8 medium oranges depending on size and how thoroughly you segment them. One cup of sugar to that quart is about 7 oz.
- Choose the right orangesNavels are seedless and save the seeding step, though you will still core them. Navel juice tends to develop a bitter note as it stands; Valencias or common juice oranges hold their flavour better, and blood oranges give a striking colour.
- Sugar is structuralSugar lowers the freezing point and keeps the texture softer. At only one cup to the quart this ice will still set fairly firm, so let it temper before serving; reducing the sugar further makes it icier and harder still.
- Yield and servingAbout a quart of finished ice, serving six as a small course. Ices of this kind were served either as a palate cleanser between courses or simply as a dessert.
Orange ices are among the oldest of the frozen sweets, predating custard-based ice cream in European kitchens: sugar, fruit juice and a bucket of ice and salt need no dairy and no cooking. By the time American fruit cookery books like this one appeared, the hand-cranked churn with its salt-and-ice packing had made such ices ordinary home fare rather than confectioners' work, which is why the instruction here is simply "and freeze" with no explanation.