Ginger Ice
Make a syrup of a quart of water and the juice of four lemons and two cups of sugar. Pour this over a dessertspoon of Larkin Gelatine that has been moistened in a small portion of the water; stir until dissolved, and cool. Freeze and when dasher is ready to be removed stir in one-fourth pound of candied ginger root. Remove the can from the tub and loosen the Ginger Ice from the sides by applying a cloth wrung from hot water. Serve whole as shown in the illustration, or in slices.
A gelatine-set lemon water ice studded with candied ginger, written for a hand-crank freezer whose can doubles as the mould. The technique translates directly to a modern churn, with two adjustments: the gelatine needs heat to dissolve, and the sugar level is low enough that the finished ice will be hard.
- The hinge: dissolve the gelatine properlySoften the gelatine in a few tablespoons of the cold water for five minutes, then pour the syrup over it hot — gelatine will not dissolve in a cold or lukewarm liquid, and undissolved grains give a stringy ice. Heat the water and sugar together until clear, add the bloomed gelatine off the heat, then stir in the lemon juice and chill thoroughly before churning.
- A dessertspoonBetween a teaspoon and a tablespoon: roughly two teaspoons, which is close to one modern envelope of powdered gelatine (about 1/4 oz). That is a light set, meant to keep the ice smooth and sliceable rather than to make jelly.
- Larkin GelatineA house-brand product of the Larkin mail-order company. Any unflavoured powdered gelatine substitutes one for one.
- Sugar and textureTwo cups of sugar to a quart of water plus lemon juice sits in the usual range for a sorbet syrup, and the ice will still freeze firm. The gelatine is there for smoothness and body rather than softness; expect to temper the ice in the refrigerator for fifteen minutes or so before slicing.
- Freezing without a tub"Freeze" means packing the can in a wooden tub with crushed ice and rock salt and cranking until the dasher stiffens. An ice cream machine churns it in 20 to 30 minutes; still-freezing in a shallow pan with a fork through it every half hour also works, though the texture is coarser.
- The ginger goes in lastChop the quarter pound of candied ginger fine and fold it in when the ice is already frozen, as directed. Added earlier the pieces are apt to sink before the mixture thickens.
- UnmouldingThe can was the mould — hence the hot cloth and the cylinder "served whole." Pack the churned ice into a loaf tin or a straight-sided container, freeze firm for several hours, then dip briefly in hot water and turn out to slice.
- YieldAbout a quart and a half; eight small servings, or six generous slices.
Water ices flavoured with lemon were the plainest thing a nineteenth-century freezer produced, and candied ginger was one way to make one seem worth putting on a dinner table — ginger in syrup arrived through the China trade and remained a slightly luxurious grocery item well into the twentieth century. The gelatine is the giveaway to this recipe's origin: booklets of this kind were published by manufacturers to sell a branded pantry good, in this case the gelatine put out by the Larkin company of Buffalo, a mail-order house that grew from soap into a vast catalogue of household and food products distributed through neighbourhood buying clubs. Recipes in such books name the brand in the instructions as a matter of course. The instruction to serve the ice whole, unmoulded from the freezer can and sliced at table, reflects a period when a dessert's shape was half its appeal, and when the illustration was doing as much selling as the text.