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Pomona Frappe
1 1/2 cups sugar 4 cups water 1 quart sweet cider 2 cups orange juice 1/2 cup lemon juice Make a syrup by boiling sugar and water twenty minutes. Add cider, orange juice, and lemon juice. Cool, strain, and freeze to a mush.
A sweetened cider-and-citrus ice, meant to be frozen only to the slush stage rather than set hard. Nothing here is difficult; the details that matter are the cider, the sugar concentration, and knowing when to stop freezing.
- Freeze to a mush, not to a blockThe hinge of the recipe. Sugar and fruit acid depress the freezing point, so the mixture wants to stay slushy, but left overnight in a modern freezer it will still set firm. Stir and scrape every 30 minutes for two to three hours, or churn briefly in an ice cream maker and serve straight away.
- "Sweet cider"In American books of this period this means fresh, unfermented apple juice, pressed and not yet turned. Use good cloudy apple juice or fresh cider from the chill cabinet; British-style alcoholic cider is not what is meant.
- The syrupBoiling 1 1/2 cups sugar with 4 cups water for twenty minutes drives off a fair amount of water and concentrates the syrup, which is part of what keeps the finished frappe soft. Do not shorten it to a quick dissolve, or cool the pan and top it back up to 4 cups.
- Juice quantitiesTwo cups of orange juice is roughly six to eight juicing oranges; half a cup of lemon juice is three to four lemons. Fresh juice is worth it here, since the drink is little else.
- StrainStraining is not optional in the original and should not be here either. Pulp and membrane freeze into gritty flecks and spoil the texture.
- YieldAbout two to two and a half quarts once the syrup has reduced, enough for a dozen or so small servings in glasses. It can be halved without trouble.
- ServingServe in chilled stemmed glasses with a spoon, either as a between-course palate cleanser or spooned over plain steamed or sponge puddings.
Frappé, from the French for "struck" or "iced," was a common American term around 1900 for a mixture frozen only to a coarse slush, softer than a water ice and harder than a chilled drink. It was served in small glasses between the courses of a long dinner, or spooned over plain puddings. The name Pomona is that of the Roman goddess of fruit trees and orchards, an apt label for a cider-based ice. Sweet cider was cheap and seasonal in the apple-growing states, and this is a dessert that could be made without cream or eggs.