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Lemon Sherbet
1 qt. water 1 1/2 cups sugar 3/4 cup lemon juice 1 egg white Make a syrup of the boiling water and sugar, add lemon juice; cool, strain and freeze. When half frozen add the white beaten stiff.
A plain water ice in the American style: sugar syrup, citrus, and a beaten white folded in partway through freezing to lighten the texture. The proportions are sound; only the equipment assumptions have changed.
- The freezer meant a crank churn"Freeze" in a book of this vintage means a hand-cranked bucket freezer packed with ice and rock salt. A modern ice cream machine does the same job; without one, freeze in a shallow metal pan and rake with a fork every 30 minutes.
- QuantitiesA quart is 4 cups, and 3/4 cup lemon juice is roughly 4 to 6 lemons depending on size. The finished mixture runs a little over 5 cups and yields about six servings.
- Add the juice off the heatOnce the syrup has boiled, take it off the heat before the lemon juice goes in. The recipe's order does not actually call for boiling the juice, and prolonged heating dulls the fresh aroma of citrus.
- Strain, and zest first if you likeStraining catches pulp and seeds, which freeze into hard specks. If you want more perfume, steep the pared zest in the hot syrup and strain it out at the same stage.
- "Half frozen"The mixture should be slushy and holding soft ridges, not solid. Fold the beaten white in at that point; too early and it simply dissolves, too late and it stays in streaks.
- Raw egg whiteThe white is never cooked. Use pasteurized whites, sold in cartons, if you are serving anyone pregnant, elderly, very young, or immune-compromised.
- RipeningSherbet churned to a soft slush benefits from an hour or two in the freezer to firm up, then a few minutes on the counter before scooping. With no invert sugar or alcohol in it, it will tend to set harder than many modern sorbets.
Sherbet in an American cookbook of this period generally means a water ice, usually citrus, lightened with beaten egg white or occasionally gelatin, and distinct from both plain ices and the cream-based frozen puddings. The English word came in via Turkish serbet and Persian sharbat, from an Arabic root meaning to drink; the parallel form sorbet reached English separately through Italian sorbetto and French. The earliest versions really were chilled sweetened beverages rather than a scoopable dessert.