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Lemon Sherbet
The same as Water Ice, omitting the whites of eggs.
All fruit sherbets made in the same way.
Strawberry Bombe Glacé Line a mold with Strawberry Ice Cream, fill with Pineapple Water Ice. Pack in ice and salt four hours. Serve with Strawberry Sauce.
Raspberry Bombe Glacé Line a mold with Raspberry Water Ice. Fill with Vanilla Ice Cream, or whipped cream sweetened and flavored. Pack in ice and salt four hours.
This is a cross-reference entry rather than a standalone formula: the sherbet is the book's Water Ice made without beaten egg whites, and the two bombes are assembly instructions for frozen mixtures made elsewhere in the section. A few conventions of 1900s ice-making need translating.
- The terms are reversed from modern usageIn this book the water ice carries the beaten egg whites and the sherbet is the plainer version. Today the naming runs the other way, sherbet being the enriched one, so read the instruction literally rather than by habit.
- You need the base recipeNothing here gives sugar, juice or water quantities. A workable lemon ice is roughly 1 lb sugar to 1 quart water with the juice of 6 lemons, but if you are following this book, use its Water Ice entry and simply leave the whites out.
- Packing in ice and saltThe mold is buried in a mixture of crushed ice and rock salt, about three or four parts ice to one of salt by volume, in a wooden bucket or insulated tub. The salt drops the brine below 32F so the packed mold hardens through. A modern freezer will harden the mold too, though still air chills more slowly than brine and is likely to need longer than four hours.
- Sealing the moldSalt brine will find any gap and ruin the bombe. Butter the seam and press a strip of greased paper or cloth over the join before the mold goes into the ice.
- Lining a bombeThe outer layer must be soft enough to spread but firm enough to hold the wall. Work quickly with a chilled spoon against a chilled metal mold, building an even half-inch shell, then freeze the shell solid before filling. A soupy lining will slump to the bottom and the finished slices will be lopsided.
- UnmoldingDip the sealed mold in cold water for a few seconds, wipe away every trace of salt before opening, then invert onto a chilled platter. Salt left on the outside will end up on the dessert.
- YieldThe recipe names no size; a quart mold would give roughly eight to ten small servings, and bombes are cut in wedges rather than scooped.
Lowney's Cook Book was issued in 1907 under the name of Maria Willett Howard for the Walter M. Lowney Company, a Boston chocolate manufacturer, and, like other maker-sponsored cookbooks of the period, it aimed to be a general household manual rather than a chocolate pamphlet. The frozen-dishes chapter belongs to the age of the hand-cranked freezer and the ice delivery cart, when a bombe glacé -- the name is usually explained by the bomb-shaped molds the dessert was made in -- was a popular showpiece dessert. Terse cross-referenced entries like this one are common in the section, which takes for granted that the reader has the Water Ice and Ice Cream formulas to hand.