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Orange Ice
Mrs. P. G. Osborn. ¼ C lemon juice 1 t gelatine 2 T cold water Soak gelatine in cold water. Add the sugar to the boiling water and boil for five minutes, stirring just until dissolved. Add gelatine and strained fruit juices. Freeze.
Mrs. F. H. Steele, Kewanee, Ill.
A church-supper water ice, printed in the compressed shorthand of community cookbooks — the ingredient list has clearly lost a line or two in typesetting. Read the notes below before shopping.
- The list is incompleteThe method calls for sugar, boiling water and "strained fruit juices," none of which appear in the ingredient list; the orange itself is only implied by the title. Only the ¼ cup lemon juice, 1 teaspoon gelatine and 2 tablespoons cold water survived the printer. The missing amounts cannot be recovered from the page itself.
- Period proportions, for orientationIces of this kind were commonly built from a quart or so of water, sugar in the range of 1½ to 2 cups, and the juice of several oranges with a lemon for sharpness. That is offered only as a rough orientation, not as a documented standard or a reconstruction of Mrs. Osborn's recipe.
- Gelatine strength has changedGelatine measure -- A modern envelope of granulated gelatine is about 2¼ teaspoons, so this recipe uses well under half a packet. Keep it to a scant teaspoon: the gelatine here is only for body, not set.
- Why the syrup is boiledFive minutes of boiling concentrates the syrup slightly and guarantees the sugar is fully dissolved. Stir only until it clears — continued stirring on the boil encourages crystals on the pan walls.
- Add juice off the heatThe gelatine and strained juices go in after boiling. Heating citrus juice dulls the fresh top notes that are the whole point of an orange ice, and prolonged heat weakens gelatine.
- Strain, and mean itPulp and membrane freeze into hard flecks. Push the juice through a fine sieve; the original's "strained" is doing real work.
- "Freeze" meant a crank freezerIn a book of this kind this went into a hand-cranked can packed with ice and coarse salt, which churns as it chills. In an ice cream machine, run until it holds a soft ribbon. Still-freezing in a shallow pan works but wants stirring hard with a fork every 30 minutes for about 3 hours.
- Yield and servingWith the amounts missing, the yield cannot be read off the page; scale the servings to whatever quantity of syrup and juice you settle on. Serve it in glasses straight from the freezer — it melts fast and, having no fat, hardens to a brick if held overnight.
Water ices — sugar syrup, fruit juice, no dairy — were among the plainest and cheapest of frozen desserts, and they suited a church cookbook well: no cream to sour on a summer afternoon, no eggs to curdle, and a hand-crank freezer could often be borrowed from a neighbor. The teaspoon of gelatine suggests a later rather than an earlier recipe; packaged granulated gelatine became widely available in American households toward the end of the nineteenth century, and cooks found that a trace of it kept an ice from freezing into coarse shards. The double attribution, with one name at the head and another from Kewanee at the foot, is a common feature of compiled volumes, though what it signifies here is unclear — in closely set books it is as often a typesetting run-on from the next recipe as a genuine second credit.