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Grape Sherbet or Water Ice
Make a syrup of three-fourths pound sugar to a pint of water. When cool add one pint of grape juice and freeze. A tablespoon of orange or lemon juice brings out the flavour. For the sherbet add the usual whipped eggs when half frozen.
A two-ingredient frozen dessert that lives or dies on the sugar-to-liquid ratio. The original assumes a hand-cranked freezer packed with ice and salt, and assumes you know what "the usual whipped eggs" means.
- The sugar is structuralThree-fourths pound of sugar is about 1 2/3 cups, dissolved in a pint (2 cups) of water and then cut with a pint of juice. That works out to roughly 25 percent sugar in the finished mix, which is what keeps the ice soft enough to scoop. Cutting the sugar to taste will give you a solid block.
- Grape juiceThe book means unsweetened juice pressed from ripe grapes; in an American book of this period that most likely means Concord, though the text does not say. Bottled 100 percent Concord juice is the closest modern equivalent; avoid anything labelled grape drink or sweetened cocktail, whose added sugar throws off the sugar-to-liquid ratio the recipe depends on.
- The acid is not optional in practiceA tablespoon of lemon or orange juice does exactly what the text says. Concord juice on its own tastes flat and slightly cloying once frozen, because cold dulls sweetness and aroma both.
- Cool the syrup completelyAdding grape juice to warm syrup drives off the volatile aroma that makes the dessert taste of grapes rather than of sugar. Chill the mixed base thoroughly before it goes into the machine.
- FreezingIn an ice cream maker, churn 20 to 30 minutes, then firm up in the freezer for a couple of hours. Without a machine, freeze in a shallow pan and break up the crystals with a fork every 30 minutes for about three hours, which produces a granita texture rather than the smooth one the original intends.
- Water ice versus sherbetIn this recipe the distinction is the egg: the water ice is juice, sugar and water alone, while the sherbet gets the whipped egg added when the mixture is half frozen, giving a lighter, foamier body. The text says "eggs" without specifying whites or a quantity, though comparable recipes of the period generally mean stiffly beaten whites.
- The egg whites are never cookedFolding raw whites into a frozen base leaves them raw. Use pasteurized egg whites, or make the water ice version and leave the egg out.
- YieldAbout one quart, or six small servings. Sherbets of this kind were served in stemmed glasses, often between courses rather than as dessert.
Grape water ice belongs to a specific American moment: the arrival of reliable bottled, unfermented grape juice. Thomas Bramwell Welch, a Methodist dentist in Vineland, New Jersey, began pasteurizing Concord juice in 1869 as a communion wine substitute, and over the following decades commercial grape juice became steadily more available, promoted as a temperance-friendly drink. The grape itself was the Concord, selected by Ephraim Bull in Concord, Massachusetts, around 1849 and very widely grown by the time books like this were written. The recipe's casual distinction between "sherbet" and "water ice" reflects an older usage, in which a water ice was simply sweetened juice frozen, while a sherbet was often lightened with beaten egg white or occasionally gelatine; neither contained cream, which kept them acceptable as a palate cleanser partway through a long dinner.