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Orange Ice Cream
For each quart of new milk and cream (equal parts) grate or cut fine the rinds of three oranges, simmering them in a pint of water till reduced to one-half pint, then strain. When cool add to the milk and cream. Use one heaping cup of sugar to each quart of liquid. If preferred, make the custard given in Introductory Recipes, adding to it the grated rind of three oranges for each quart of custard. A half-tablespoon of gelatine dissolved and added just before freezing gives the effect of a mousse.
ORANGE CHIPS (A Confection) Peel the yellow rind of oranges in long, thin "chips"-and for each pound of chips weigh and set aside a pound of sugar. Squeeze and strain the juice from the fruit; place the sugar with it and let it stand over night. Have the peel soaking in a separate vessel of fresh water for the same length of time.. In the morning bring the peel to a boil in the water in which it has soaked and let simmer till very tender. Meantime cook the sugar and juice together into a syrup. When the peel is ready drain it and place in the syrup, boiling gently until the syrup thickens and becomes hard (like candy) when dropped into cold water. At this stage lift the chips singly and carefully from the syrup, placing them on oiled paper on trays, to drain and dry, setting trays in the sun. In twenty-four hours remove the strips to fresh paper but leave trays in the sun until all moisture has evaporated from the peel. This may take weeks. A fruit-dryer will facilitate matters if a slow, gentle heat is used. The process will be shorter for mandarin and tangerine peel.
SWEET ORANGE MARMALADE No. I Wash the fruit and with a knife point cut the rind through to the pulp lengthwise and around (in the middle) so that the rind may readily be taken off either in halves or quarters. Put this rind (including yellow and white) on the stove in a vessel of cold water and let come to a boil, continuing till the rind is thoroughly tender. Cut then into fine strips. Meantime have the pulp prepared by halving, seeding, and removing the heaviest rag at the core, only then slicing it. Put to boil in separate saucepan and cook till tender, then set back till rind is soft and clear. At this stage add the pulp to the rind, measuring, and stirring in equal measure of heated sugar. It will take but about twenty minutes to cook down sufficiently thick after this; then seal.
SWEET ORANGE MARMALADE No. 2 Cook the juice of twenty oranges till it is transparent, then add five pounds of sugar and the grated or very fine minced rind of the oranges. Boil until translucent and very thick, then seal.
Either formula for the marmalade admits of variation by the addition of other fruit. When thick and still hot apple, pear, pieplant, or fig marmalade or the stewed citronmelon may be added in equal quantity, the two cooked down together and put up as usual.
Four related preparations built on orange peel, running from a frozen dessert to a candied confection and two marmalades. The common thread is the rind, and how much white pith you allow into each.
- The hinge: rind, not pithFor the ice cream and for Marmalade No. 2 the text says only "rind"; taking just the coloured zest is the safer course, as the white layer beneath is bitter. Only the chips specify "the yellow rind". Marmalade No. 1 deliberately includes the white, but only because the peel is boiled long enough to go tender and clear first.
- "New milk"Fresh, unskimmed cow's milk straight from the dairy. Use whole pasteurized milk; combined half and half with cream, the mixture lands near a modern ice cream base at roughly 20 percent fat.
- Quantities for the ice creamOne quart of dairy, one heaping cup sugar (about 8 oz), and the strained rind infusion reduced from a pint of water to half a pint. That makes roughly 1.5 quarts of base before churning; the finished volume depends on how much air is worked in.
- The gelatineHalf a tablespoon is one and a half teaspoons, about two-thirds of a standard 1/4-oz envelope per quart. Soften it in a little cold water, dissolve over gentle heat, and stir it in just before freezing as directed; it keeps the texture soft and mousse-like rather than icy.
- FreezingThe original assumes a hand-cranked ice-and-salt freezer. Any modern churn works; chill the base thoroughly first, as the orange infusion is largely water and a warm base will freeze coarse.
- Orange chips: the syrup stage"Hard when dropped into cold water" is the hard-ball to hard-crack range, roughly 250-300F. Use a thermometer; at the upper end the syrup colours quickly and the chips turn brittle rather than chewy.
- Drying without sunWeeks on a sunny tray invites insects and mould. A dehydrator at 130-140F, or an oven on its lowest setting with the door propped, does the same work in hours. The chips are done when they are tacky but not wet.
- Marmalade proportionsNo. 1 uses equal measures of prepared fruit and sugar by volume. No. 2 uses the juice of twenty oranges to five pounds of sugar; the finished yield depends on how far it is boiled down. Both are ready at 220F, or when a spoonful wrinkles on a chilled plate.
- Sealing"Then seal" means pouring hot into hot jars and capping, the open-kettle method. Marmalade is acidic and heavily sugared, so spoilage risk is mould rather than anything worse, but current practice is a 10-minute boiling-water bath for a reliable seal and shelf life.
- Vanished names"Pieplant" is rhubarb — stalks only. "Citronmelon" is citron melon, the hard white-fleshed preserving melon, still sold for candying in some seed catalogues but rarely in shops.
Marmalade in the English sense — a set preserve of bitter citrus suspended in shred — is generally traced to Scottish practice in the eighteenth century, though the word itself came from Portuguese marmelada, a stiff quince paste. What is striking about this page is that both marmalade formulas call for sweet oranges rather than Sevilles. Orange chips belong to an older tradition of candied peel as a keeping confection, made when the fruit was plentiful and dried in the sun for months of use afterwards — hence the note that a fruit-dryer "will facilitate matters."