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Canton Sherbet
4 cups water 1 cup sugar 1/4 lb. Canton ginger 1/2 cup orange juice 1/3 cup lemon juice Cut ginger in small pieces, add water and sugar, boil fifteen minutes; add fruit juice, cool, strain, and freeze. To be used in place of punch at a course dinner. This quantity is enough to serve twelve Persons.
A late-Victorian intermediate-course ice, closer to a granita than to a creamy sherbet. The one thing that decides the outcome is how you freeze it.
- Canton gingerGinger root preserved in heavy syrup, shipped from Guangzhou in glazed stoneware jars. Stem ginger in syrup is the direct equivalent; crystallised ginger works if you rinse off the sugar coating and count it toward the cup of sugar. A quarter pound is about 4 oz, roughly half a cup chopped.
- Freezing without a freezer"Freeze" here means a hand-cranked bucket freezer packed with ice and rock salt, which churns constantly. An ice cream machine gives the closest result. Without one, freeze in a shallow metal pan and rake it with a fork every 30 minutes for about three hours.
- Sugar and textureOne cup of sugar in four cups of water is a lean syrup by sorbet standards, so the mix will set very hard if left undisturbed. The syrup clinging to preserved ginger helps a little; raking or churning matters more.
- The boilFifteen minutes of boiling, as the recipe directs, both reduces the syrup slightly and draws the heat out of the ginger. Do not skip it and steep instead, or the ginger flavour stays thin.
- Add juice off the heatThe orange and lemon juice go in after boiling, as written. Cooking citrus juice dulls it and flattens the sharpness that makes this work between courses.
- StrainStrain out the ginger pieces once cool. Left in, they freeze into hard nuggets. A few finely minced pieces returned to the mix are pleasant if you want the texture.
- Yield and serviceTwelve small servings, about a third of a cup each. Serve in chilled glasses partway through a long meal, not as dessert; a full dessert portion of this would be punishing.