Home › Some Kitchen Kinks › Some Kitchen Kinks: Irish-moss
Some Kitchen Kinks: Irish-moss
WHAT AN INVALID MAY DRINK Irish-moss Lemonade. - 2 cupfuls of boiling water; ¼ cupful of Irish moss; cupful of lemon juice; 3 tablespoonfuls of sugar. Soak the Irish moss over night, then pick it over very carefully. It is generally full of sand and all sorts of foreign matter, and can never be made palatable unless it has been through a number of waters. When clean, put it in a double boiler, pour boiling water over it, and let it steep until dissolved. Strain through a square of cheese cloth, then add the lemon juice and sugar. Serve very hot. This is one of the most soothing drinks to give a patient who is suffering from a sore throat or lung trouble.
A seaweed infusion thickened by its own carrageenan, served hot as a demulcent. The recipe is simple; the work is all in cleaning the moss.
- The rinsing is the recipeDried Irish moss (Chondrus crispus) arrives with sand, shell fragments and bits of other weed still in it. Soak it overnight in cold water, then lift it out through several changes of fresh water rather than pouring the water off, so the grit stays behind. Skimping here gives a drink that grates.
- Ambiguous lemon quantityThe text reads "cupful of lemon juice" with no fraction, almost certainly a printer's omission. A quarter cup against two cups of liquid is plausibly what was meant; a full cup would overwhelm 3 tablespoons of sugar. Add it to taste and stop when it reads as lemonade.
- Irish moss measurementA quarter cupful means the loose dried weed, which is bulky and weighs very little — roughly a quarter ounce, or 7 g. After soaking it swells considerably; measure before soaking, not after.
- Double boiler and time"Steep until dissolved" is not timed in the original; in practice it usually takes something like 20 to 30 minutes over simmering water. The fronds never fully disappear; you are done when the liquid feels slippery between the fingers and coats a spoon faintly. Strain and discard the solids.
- Do not boil hardDirect high heat can scorch the extract and weaken the gel. The double boiler is worth using as written: it holds the liquid below a hard boil, though the recipe itself gives no reason for specifying it.
- It sets as it coolsCarrageenan gels as it cools, so this thickens to a soft jelly if it stands; the original's instruction to serve very hot keeps it drinkable, and the recipe itself frames the hot drink as soothing to a sore throat. Reheat gently over water to loosen it rather than making a fresh batch.
- YieldAbout two cups, or two servings. It does not keep well; the gel weeps and the lemon dulls after a day in the refrigerator.
- SourcingDried Irish moss is still sold by Caribbean and health-food grocers and by seaweed harvesters in Maine and the Canadian Maritimes. Buy the whole dried fronds rather than powdered carrageenan, which behaves differently and needs no soaking.
Irish moss is a red seaweed of the cold North Atlantic, gathered on both the Irish and the New England coasts; the alternative name carragheen is generally traced to a place name on the Irish coast, and the thickener carrageenan takes its name from the weed. Nineteenth-century harvesting was a substantial industry around Scituate, Massachusetts, where the moss was raked, bleached in the sun and dried for sale to cooks and druggists. Its gelling power made it the household stand-in for expensive isinglass in blancmanges and jellies, but it earned its place in "invalid cookery" sections like this one for a different reason: the slippery infusion coats a raw throat, and the sick-room diet of the period leaned heavily on such soothing, barely nourishing liquids. Books of this era commonly grouped beef tea, barley water, gruels and moss drinks together under headings addressed to whoever was nursing at home.