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Orange Marmalade
6 oranges 4 lemons 1 grape fruit Wash the fruit, slice very thin, first cutting in quarters to remove the seeds. To each pound of sliced fruit add 3 pints cold water, let this stand twenty-four hours, then boil two hours or until peel is perfectly tender. Let stand until next day. To each pint of boiled fruit add one pint of granulated sugar, boil together for two hours or until it jellies. This rule makes twenty glasses.
Ice Cream Ices, Sherbets etc.
Vanilla Ice Cream, No. 1 1 qt. thin cream 3/4 cup sugar 2 teaspoons vanilla Mix ingredients and freeze.
Vanilla Ice Cream, No. 2 3 cups cream 1 cup milk 3/4 cup sugar 2 teaspoons vanilla Whip two cups of the cream; to the thin part that drains from the whip add 1 cup of cream and 1 cup of milk, the sugar, and scald thoroughly. Cool and add the flavoring. Freeze till soft mush, then add the whipped cream. Turn the freezer as fast as possible for five minutes; remove dasher, repack and let stand thirty minutes before serving.
Vanilla Ice Cream, No. 3 1 pint milk 1 pint cream 1 cup sugar 2 eggs 1 teaspoon Gold Medal flour 1/4 teaspoon salt 2 teaspoons vanilla Scald the milk; mix sugar, flour and salt, stir into it; cook twenty minutes, stirring constantly. Pour boiling hot on the beaten eggs, strain, add the cream and flavoring and freeze as usual.
Vanilla Ice Cream, No. 4 1 qt. cream 1 pint milk 1 cup sugar 1/8 package gelatine 1/8 teaspoon salt 1 tablespoon vanilla Soak the gelatine in a little cold milk; scald the milk and sugar, pour over the gelatine, add salt; strain and cool. Whip the cream, add it to the milk mixture, add vanilla, and freeze as usual. This rule packs easily into fancy forms and holds its shape in a warm room better than pure cream.
Two things sit on this page: a three-day citrus marmalade and four versions of vanilla ice cream, all written for a cook with a jelly cupboard and a hand-crank freezer. The notes below cover what has changed since.
- Read the marmalade as a three-day processSlice and soak on day one, boil two hours and rest overnight on day two, then cook with sugar on day three. The long soak is what softens the peel and draws out pectin; skipping it gives tough rind.
- The water ratio is generousThree pints of water per pound of sliced fruit is roughly three parts water to one part fruit by weight, and will need real evaporation. Use a wide, heavy pan and expect the mixture to reduce substantially in that first two-hour boil.
- Sugar is measured against boiled fruit, not rawThe equal pint-for-pint sugar goes in only after the first cooking, when the volume has already dropped. Measure the cooked fruit and liquid together after it has stood overnight.
- Judge the set by temperatureThe recipe gives no test beyond "boil two hours or until it jellies." A thermometer is faster than guessing: 220F at sea level, or 8 degrees above the boiling point of water where you are.
- Save the seedsCitrus seeds and pith are rich in pectin. Tie the seeds removed at the quartering stage in muslin, soak and boil them with the fruit, then squeeze and discard before the sugar goes in.
- "Twenty glasses" is about ten pounds"Twenty glasses" is a large yield -- A jelly glass of the period held roughly six to eight ounces, which puts the yield somewhere around 7.5 to 10 lb of marmalade. Halving the recipe is sensible for a modern household.
- Sealing has moved onJars of this period were commonly closed with melted paraffin poured over the surface, which the USDA no longer recommends. Fill sterilised jars, seal with two-piece lids and process in a boiling water bath according to current guidance, or simply refrigerate and eat within a month.
- Thin cream and cream"Thin cream" corresponds to what we would call light cream, around 18 to 20 percent fat; half-and-half is thinner still and will give a leaner result. Unqualified "cream" here is probably the richer, heavy cream. No. 1 is a Philadelphia-style uncooked base, No. 3 a flour-thickened custard.
- "Freeze as usual" means ice and rock saltThe original assumes a bucket freezer packed with three parts crushed ice to one part rock salt, cranked until stiff, then repacked to ripen for half an hour or more. Any modern churn works; keep the ripening step, which is what firms the texture.
- The gelatine quantity is ambiguous"1/8 package" refers to a boxed gelatine of the period, not today's quarter-ounce envelope, so no reliable conversion exists. Use only a very small amount of powdered gelatine for the full quart-and-pint batch and adjust by result.
Marmalade takes its name from the Portuguese marmelada, a solid quince paste, and only shifted to mean a citrus preserve in Britain, where the bitter Seville orange gave it its lasting form. This version is the American home-kitchen descendant: sweet oranges rather than Sevilles, with lemons and a grapefruit added for the acid and bitterness the sweet fruit lacks, grapefruit itself being still a relative novelty in American households of the period. The book was published by the Washburn-Crosby milling company, whose Gold Medal flour appears by name in one of the ice cream recipes, as a promotional volume. The ice creams that follow give four separate recipes, and the gelatine version states its own purpose plainly: it "holds its shape in a warm room better than pure cream."