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Irish Moss Lemonade
1/4 cup Irish moss 2 cups cold water 4 tablespoons lemon juice Sugar Pick over, and wash the moss and soak for fifteen minutes. Drain, and add the cold water; cook in a double boiler until syrupy. If it is too thick, add hot water. Strain, add the lemon juice and sugar to taste. Reheat, and serve.
A carrageen seaweed drink, thickened rather than jellied, from the era when Irish moss was a pantry staple sold by the ounce at the druggist. The recipe assumes you know when "syrupy" has arrived; that judgement is the whole dish.
- What Irish moss isDried Chondrus crispus, the red seaweed that carrageenan is extracted from, sold today as carrageen or Irish moss in health-food shops and Caribbean groceries. Buy the whole dried fronds, not powdered carrageenan, which behaves quite differently and will set solid.
- Pick over means pick overWild-harvested moss carries sand, shell fragments and the odd bit of other weed. Spread it out and go through it by hand before washing, or the finished drink will be gritty even after straining.
- Quarter cup, loosely packedA quarter cup of dried fronds is roughly 5-8 grams depending on how tightly you press them, and the moss swells to several times its bulk in the soak. If the finished liquid is thin, you had a light quarter cup; more moss, not longer cooking, is the fix.
- How long in the double boilerNo time is given. Expect perhaps 20 to 30 minutes over simmering water for the carrageenan to dissolve and the liquid to thicken to a light syrup that coats a spoon. The double boiler keeps the mixture off direct heat, which risks scorching.
- Strain while hotThe mixture stiffens as it cools, so pour it through a fine sieve or muslin the moment it comes off the heat. Press the spent fronds gently; hard pressing pushes fine debris through.
- Lemon and sugar go in lastAcid added during the long cooking degrades carrageenan and thins the result. Adding it after straining, as written, keeps the body. Start with about two tablespoons of sugar for the batch and taste.
- Yield and servingAbout two cups, or two servings. It is meant to be drunk hot; chilled, it will thicken further and may set to a soft jelly, which is not a fault but is a different drink.
Irish moss appears in American cookbooks from the mid-nineteenth century onward mainly as an invalid food, one of the cluster of gentle, thickened preparations — barley water, beef tea, arrowroot gruel — kept on hand for the sick room. The seaweed was gathered commercially along the coasts of Ireland and later New England, dried and bleached in the sun, and sold as a cheap gelling agent long before its extract was isolated and marketed as carrageenan for commercial dairy and confectionery use. Carrageen was widely believed to soothe coughs and chest complaints, a reputation generally traced to Irish folk practice, and lemonade was the palatable way to give it. One practical virtue is worth noting: seaweed thickened without the calf's-foot or isinglass gelatine that ruled out most jellied dishes for vegetarians.