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Irish Moss Lemonade with Figs
1/2 cup Irish moss 2 cups water 4 figs finely chopped 1/2 cup sugar 4 tablespoons lemon juice Grated rind 1 lemon Heat the water and figs in a saucepan to the boiling point. Soak the Irish moss in enough cold water to cover it for three minutes; drain, and pick over. Add the moss and other ingredients to the figs, and simmer until the moss loses its shape.
Strain, and cool.
A carrageen drink of the kind once prescribed for invalids and sore throats: the seaweed thickens the liquid slightly and gives it body rather than flavour. Two things decide whether it works — proper picking-over of the moss and a genuinely low simmer.
- Irish mossThis is carrageen (Chondrus crispus), sold dried in health-food shops, Irish grocers and Asian markets. Half a cup of the dried, crumpled weed is roughly 10–15 g; it is very light, so measure by volume as written rather than trying to weigh it.
- Pick it over, seriouslyWild-gathered dried moss carries sand, shell fragments and stray bits of other weed. After the three-minute soak, spread it out and go through it by hand. Grit will not strain out and will ruin the drink.
- Simmer, do not boilThe recipe gives no time: cook at a bare simmer until the fronds go translucent and slump, which will take a good while rather than a few minutes. A hard boil tends to cloud the liquid and can degrade the gel, so keep the pan just barely moving.
- FigsThe recipe does not specify, but dried figs are the likelier intent for a pantry drink of this kind. Chop them small so they give up their sweetness in the short cooking time.
- StrainingA fine sieve is enough; cheesecloth gives a clearer drink. Press the solids gently to get the viscous liquid through, but do not force the fig pulp in unless you want it cloudy.
- Texture on coolingIt will thicken noticeably in the refrigerator, from syrupy to loosely set depending on how much carrageenan came out. Thin with cold water to drinking consistency and re-taste for lemon, which fades as it chills.
- YieldAbout two cups of concentrate before dilution — two to four glasses. Keep it refrigerated and use within two or three days; there is no preservative here beyond the sugar and acid.
Carrageen has been harvested off the Atlantic coasts of Ireland and New England for centuries, and by the nineteenth century it was as much a sickroom staple as a food: carrageen blancmange, moss jelly and moss lemonade appear repeatedly in domestic manuals and invalid-cookery chapters, valued for a soothing, mucilaginous texture that was thought to ease coughs and sore throats. The name is generally traced to the Irish carraigín, "little rock," for the tidal ledges it grows on, and the American trade in it was centred on the Massachusetts shore. The same polysaccharide, refined into carrageenan, still thickens commercial ice cream and non-dairy milks today.