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Pure and Wholesome
One cup of grape juice Juice of one orange Juice of one lemon One cup of sugar PRICE 10 CENTS CHEMISTS ESTABLISHED 1875 One pint of water One dessertspoon of Larkin Gelatine Moisten the Gelatine in a portion of the water; heat the remainder to boiling. Pour over the softened Gelatine, add sugar and juices and freeze in the usual way.
A grape sherbet set with a little gelatine rather than cream or egg. The stray line about price and chemists is an advertisement that sat in the margin of the original page, not part of the method.
- Larkin GelatineLarkin was a Buffalo mail-order company that sold household goods including granulated gelatine. Any unflavoured powdered gelatine substitutes; a dessertspoon is about two teaspoons, close to one standard envelope.
- What the gelatine is forIt is not there to set the mixture solid but to keep the ice smooth by interfering with large crystal growth. Use it sparingly comma too much and the thawing sherbet turns slippery and gluey.
- Bloom before boiling waterSprinkle the gelatine over a few tablespoons of the cold water and leave it three to five minutes until swollen, then pour the boiling remainder over and stir until no grains remain. Adding it straight to hot water gives lumps that never dissolve.
- Grape juiceConcord was the common American grape juice of the period, and unsweetened Concord is probably the closest match. If your juice is already sweetened, cut the sugar to about half a cup and taste the mixture cold before freezing.
- Chill firstStrain the citrus juices, combine everything, and refrigerate until thoroughly cold before churning. A warm mix in an ice cream maker gives a coarse, grainy result.
- "Freeze in the usual way"At the time this meant a hand-crank freezer packed with crushed ice and rock salt, cranked until stiff. An ice cream machine does the same work; without one, freeze in a shallow pan and beat thoroughly with a fork every 30 minutes until firm.
- YieldAbout a quart, serving four to six as a small ice. It is meant as a light course between richer dishes or after them, not as a scooping ice cream.
Fruit ices set with a trace of gelatine were a standard trick of American cookbooks around 1900, when commercial granulated gelatine had become cheap and reliable. Unfermented grape juice had a particular respectability in this period: bottled pasteurized juice was promoted heavily as a temperance drink, and a dessert built on it could be advertised, as the title of this section has it, as pure and wholesome. The book itself carries advertising for Larkin products, a reminder that many turn-of-the-century recipe collections were as much sales material for a manufacturer's branded gelatine, baking powder or extracts as they were cookery.