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Lemon Water Ice
Add the grated rind of one lemon and the juice of three lemons to Water Ice. Freeze.
This is a variation entry: it assumes you have already made the book's plain Water Ice, which is nothing more than a boiled sugar syrup, chilled. Everything hinges on getting the base right and on how you freeze it.
- The base you needPeriod water ice syrups generally fall in the range of about a quart of water to a couple of cups of sugar, boiled briefly to dissolve the sugar, then cooled completely. The book's own Water Ice recipe governs; the proportions here are only a general guide. Adding the lemon to cooled rather than hot syrup is a matter of preference, not something the recipe specifies.
- Three lemons is not a measurementModern lemons vary widely; three will give somewhere between a third and a half cup of juice. Taste the mixture cold before freezing, since cold mutes the perception of both sweetness and acid.
- Grated rindTake only the yellow zest. Any white pith turns bitter as the ice sits. Strain the rind out after it has steeped in the cold syrup for twenty minutes or so if you want a clear ice rather than a flecked one.
- Freeze means the crank freezerIn 1907 this would have gone into a pail freezer packed with crushed ice and rock salt (period manuals usually give something in the region of three parts ice to one of salt), cranked until stiff. A modern ice-cream machine does the same job; churn until it holds a soft ridge.
- Without a machinePour into a shallow metal pan, freeze, and break up the crystals with a fork every 30 minutes for two to three hours. You will get a granita texture rather than the smooth ice the original intends, which is a fair trade.
- RipeningThe old method called for repacking the frozen ice in ice and salt to firm up for an hour or two. A covered container in the freezer for the same period does it, though a sugar-only ice sets very hard; let it stand five minutes before serving.
- YieldDepending on the base recipe's proportions, expect something in the region of a quart and a half of finished ice, enough for six to eight small servings. Water ices of this period were often served between courses or as a light dessert.
Lowney's Cook Book (1907) was published by the Walter M. Lowney Company, a Boston chocolate manufacturer, and it goes well beyond the maker's own product into a full domestic manual. Water ices sit apart from ice creams in these books because they contain no dairy at all, only sweetened water and flavoring, which made them cheap and, importantly, servable at meals where cream would have been thought heavy. The clipped cross-referencing style here sends the reader back to a master Water Ice recipe and adds only what changes. Lemon appears as the standard flavor.