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Tomato Water Ice
Ingredients.
Half a pint of Tomato Purée.
Half a pint of White Stock (cold but not a jelly).
One tablespoonful of Tarragon Vinegar.
Half an ounce of Castor Sugar.
One dessertspoonful of Brandy.
Carmine to colour.
This is a savoury ice, not a dessert, and the book gives quantities only — the method is assumed knowledge. Everything below is about turning the list into something you can actually freeze.
- What it isA savoury water ice of the kind served in small glasses partway through a long dinner, or alongside cold hors d'oeuvre. The stock, vinegar and brandy are there to keep it firmly on the savoury side; the half ounce of sugar is seasoning, not sweetening.
- No method givenCombine everything cold, taste, then churn. In a machine, about 20 minutes; by hand, freeze in a shallow tray and rake with a fork every 20-30 minutes until granular. Chill the mixture thoroughly before it goes in or it will never take.
- VolumesHalf a pint is 10 fl oz British measure, so a scant 1¼ US cups; the two half-pints plus the spoonfuls come to a little over a pint, or roughly 2½ US cups before churning. That gives six to eight small glasses.
- Half an ounce of castor sugarAbout 1 tablespoon of superfine sugar. That is very little sugar for a pint of liquid, so the ice will likely set hard and coarse-grained. Scrape it into flakes rather than trying to scoop it.
- White stock, "cold but not a jelly"A light veal or chicken stock, warmed just enough to be liquid and then cooled. The instruction matters: a stock that has set to jelly will not blend evenly, and a very gelatinous one gives the finished ice a slightly gummy body.
- Tomato puréeNot modern concentrated tomato paste. The book means sieved cooked tomato, roughly the consistency of passata. If you use paste, thin it heavily or the ice will be leaden.
- Tarragon vinegarStill sold, and easily made by steeping fresh tarragon in white wine vinegar for a week. A tablespoon in this quantity will tell clearly against the tomato, so use a good one.
- CarmineCochineal colouring, presumably to brighten the colour of cooked tomato. Optional; the ice tastes the same without it.
- Season before freezingFreezing mutes salt and acid noticeably. Taste the liquid when it is already cold and push the seasoning and vinegar slightly further than seems right at room temperature.
Savoury water ices were a fixture of grand English and French service around the turn of the twentieth century, when a dinner of many courses needed something cold and sharp to break its momentum. The convention borrowed from the French sorbet or granité served midway through a formal meal, but professional kitchens in Britain extended the idea to tomato, cucumber and even consommé, sweetening barely and building the base on stock rather than syrup. Tomato was a natural candidate: acid enough to read as refreshing, and available in this period as a sieved purée. The brandy here does double duty, adding aroma and lowering the freezing point slightly so the ice stays workable. The bare ingredient list, with no method at all, is itself a period signal: such books were written for cooks who already knew how to work a freezing pail and needed only the proportions.