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Lemon Gelee
1 2/3 cups lemon juice 2 3/4 cups sugar 7 cups water 1 box vegetable gelatine Prepare the vegetable gelatine according to general directions, using three cups boiling water in which to cook it. While this is cooking, put together the lemon juice, sugar and one quart of water. Strain the vegetable gelatine through cheesecloth or a sieve, add to the mixture and freeze. The above amount will make one gallon.
A frozen water ice stiffened with agar rather than cream or egg — the sort of thing an ice-cream freezer was expected to handle in any household with a supply of ice and rock salt. Two things need translating: what "vegetable gelatine" is, and how much of it a box held.
- Vegetable gelatine is agar-agarSold in boxes of dried strips, shreds or sheets around 1900 and now stocked as agar flakes, powder or bars in Asian groceries and health shops. It is a seaweed extract and behaves nothing like leaf gelatin: it must reach a full boil to dissolve, and it sets at room temperature rather than needing the refrigerator.
- The "box" is not a fixed amountPackage sizes were not standardised and the book assumes you have read its general directions elsewhere. For a gallon of liquid ice you want a light set, not a firm one — in the region of 1 to 1 1/2 teaspoons of agar powder, or the equivalent in flakes (flakes are usually reckoned at about a tablespoon to a teaspoon of powder). Treat this as a starting point and test a spoonful on a cold saucer before committing the batch.
- Boil the agar properlyThis is the hinge. Simmer the agar in the three cups of water for a good five to ten minutes with stirring until no shreds or grains remain visible. Undissolved agar will never dissolve later, and it will sit in the finished ice as gritty specks.
- Work fast after strainingAgar begins to gel at around 100-105F, far above gelatin's setting point. Strain it and combine it with the cold lemon-sugar mixture without delay, or it will seize into lumps as it hits the cold liquid. Pouring the hot agar into the cold mixture in a thin stream while whisking is the safe way.
- Freezing"Freeze" here means a hand-crank churn packed with ice and coarse salt. A modern ice cream machine does the same job; churning matters, since agar sets into a solid block if simply left in the freezer. Without a machine, freeze in a shallow pan and rake with a fork every half hour for a granita.
- Lemon juice1 2/3 cups is roughly 10 to 14 lemons, depending on size. Bottled juice will work but tastes flat in something this plain — there is nothing here but lemon, sugar and water to hide behind.
- Yield and scalingOne gallon serves about thirty. Quartering the recipe gives a quart: about 1/3 cup plus 1 tablespoon lemon juice, 2/3 cup plus 1 tablespoon sugar, and 1 3/4 cups water, with the agar boiled in 3/4 cup of that water.
- SweetnessAt 2 3/4 cups sugar to a gallon this is markedly less sweet than a modern sorbet, and sugar is what keeps an ice scoopable. Expect a hard, icy texture; taste the base before churning and add sugar if you want it softer.
Agar-agar reached Western kitchens from Japan and China, where it has long been used as kanten, and by the late nineteenth century it was familiar to bacteriologists as culture medium and to cooks as "vegetable gelatine" — a jelly for people who would not eat one made from calves' feet or bones. That is exactly why it appears here. Meatless cookbooks of this period had to solve the gelatin problem before they could offer jellies, moulds and frozen desserts at all, and agar was one of the answers they reached for. The dish itself is unremarkable: a lemon water ice of a kind found in many general cookbooks of the era. What is telling is the gallon yield, which suggests a boarding house, an institution or a church supper rather than a family table, and the assumption that the reader owns a freezer packed with ice and salt and knows how to turn the crank.