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Cranberry Frappe
1 quart cranberries 2 cups water 1 teaspoon ginger Juice of one lemon and one orange 2 cups brown sugar Cook cranberries in the cold water until they burst. Add ginger, lemon and orange juice. Strain and add brown sugar. Freeze to a soft mush. Serve with the turkey course, in glass cups.
A cranberry granita served as a mid-meal palate cleanser rather than a dessert. The only technical demand is the freezing: it must stay loose and granular, never set hard.
- A quart of cranberriesThe recipe measures by volume, as period books generally did. A quart is roughly 4 cups of whole fresh berries, about 1 lb — one and a bit of the 12-ounce bags sold today.
- The gingerThis means dried ground ginger, the standard spice-tin article of the period. A teaspoon is assertive against two cups of sugar; start with half if you want the fruit forward.
- Strain properlyPress the cooked berries through a fine sieve or food mill rather than just pouring off liquid. You want the pulp without the skins, which freeze into tough flecks.
- Dissolve the sugar warmAdd the brown sugar to the strained purée while it is still hot and stir until no grit remains. Sugar stirred into a cold base will settle out and the frappe will freeze icy in patches.
- "Freeze to a soft mush"This is the hinge. Pour into a shallow metal pan, freeze, and scrape the whole surface with a fork every 30 minutes for about 3 hours until it is uniform crystals. An ice cream machine works too, but stop it while the mixture still slumps.
- Chill the cupsFreeze the glass cups first and serve at once. Frappe at this sugar level melts to syrup in a few minutes at the table.
- YieldSomething over a quart of finished frappe. Served as the small glass cups intended here suggest, this is a short course rather than a dessert portion.