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Lemon Water Ice
of Ingredients.
Half a pound of Loaf Sugar. 6oz One pint of Water.
The thin rind of one Lemon.
Juice of four Lemons.
Whites of two Eggs.
Put the water and sugar in a stewpan on the fire to boil ten minutes, reserving about six lumps of sugar from the half pound, with which rub the zest from the two lemons. Strain the juice, which should measure one gill; sometimes it will take more than the quantity to make the measure.
When the syrup is cold, add the lemon-juice and freeze. When half frozen, add the whipped whites of two eggs.
Omelet Glacé en Surprise.
Ingredients.
One pint of Ice Cream frozen very hard and moulded in a lemon-shaped mould.
A plain lemon sorbet from the age of the hand-cranked freezer, with one element that no longer passes muster: the whipped raw whites folded in at the half-frozen stage are never heated at any point.
- Why the cautionThe syrup is boiled, but it is explicitly cooled before the juice goes in, and the two egg whites are whipped and stirred into a mixture that is already below freezing. Nothing in the method brings the egg to a temperature that would deal with Salmonella, and freezing does not kill it. For an uncooked egg-white foam of this kind, use a current recipe written with pasteurised whites in mind.
- The garbled ingredient listThe list as printed reads "Half a pound of Loaf Sugar. 6oz" — two quantities apparently run together. The method only ever refers to the half pound, so read it as 8 oz (about 1 cup) of sugar with six lumps set aside.
- One lemon or twoThe list calls for the thin rind of one lemon, the method for rubbing the zest from two. Either works; the sugar lumps are simply the abrasive that pulls the oil out of the peel, and more zest means a more perfumed ice.
- A gillIn a British book of this period a gill is a quarter of an imperial pint, 5 fl oz, or a scant two-thirds of a US cup. Four lemons will often fall short of it, which is exactly why the author warns that it "sometimes will take more than the quantity."
- Loaf sugarRefined sugar sold in hard cones or pressed cubes, broken up with nippers as needed. Ordinary granulated sugar is the same thing for the syrup; cubes are worth buying for the zest-rubbing step, since a loose grain does the job badly.
- StewpanA straight-sided saucepan. Ten minutes at a boil will reduce the water somewhat and concentrate the syrup; the more concentrated the syrup, the softer the resulting ice sets.
- YieldRoughly a pint and a quarter to a pint and a half of mixture before the whites are added, enough for four to six small glasses; ices of this kind were commonly served as a course between dishes rather than as dessert.
- The stray last line"Omelet Glacé en Surprise" and its pint of hard-frozen ice cream belong to the next recipe in the book; the page break has dragged its opening into this one.
Water ices — sugar syrup, fruit juice and nothing else — were long established on English tables, and by the late nineteenth century a lemon water ice was a common palate-cleanser served midway through a long dinner, often called a sorbet on the menu card whatever the cookbook called it at home. The trick of rubbing whole lumps of sugar over the lemon peel is older than this recipe and was a common way to capture the oil in the zest; the lumps come away yellow and saturated and then dissolve into the syrup. Folding whipped whites into a half-frozen ice, which turns a hard granular sorbet into something lighter and paler, is close to what period cooks called a spoom. The ice had to be cranked by hand in a pail of crushed ice and salt, checked and scraped repeatedly — a dish that quietly announced a kitchen with staff to spare.