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Orange Ice
2 cups sugar. 1 quart water. Juice of 5 or 6 oranges Juice of 2 lemons Grated rind of 2 oranges Boil the sugar and water for ten minutes; add the juice and rind and let stand until time to freeze. Strain and freeze.
A plain water ice of the old crank-freezer school. Note first that the page as printed is incomplete: the sugar and water are called for in the method but their quantities are missing from the ingredient list, so you are working from proportion rather than from the book.
- The missing syrupThe sugar and water quantities called for in the method simply do not appear on the page; whether they were dropped in printing or in transcription cannot be known. Period orange ices of this type generally run somewhere around 1 to 2 cups sugar to 1 quart water; the original figure cannot be recovered from what survives on the page, so treat it as a proportion to be judged rather than a measurement to be followed.
- Boil ten minutes, then stopThe ten-minute boil dissolves the sugar fully and drives off a little water so the syrup holds body when frozen. Boiling much longer concentrates the syrup further and moves it toward candy-making territory, which throws off the balance the recipe assumes.
- Add juice off the heatThe instruction to add juice and rind after boiling is the hinge of the recipe. Citrus juice cooked in syrup loses its fresh top note fast and turns faintly marmalade-like.
- Why it stands"Let stand until time to freeze" is an infusion step: the grated zest gives up its oils into the cooled syrup. An hour is useful, longer in the refrigerator is better, and then strain out the rind as directed or the finished ice will be gritty.
- Juice yieldFive or six oranges should give roughly 2 cups of juice; adjust the number of fruit to hit that rather than counting fruit.
- Freezing without a crank freezerAn ice cream machine handles this directly. Without one, freeze in a shallow metal pan and rake thoroughly with a fork every 30 minutes until firm, which gives a granita texture rather than the smoother churned ice intended here.
- Sweetness and texture are linkedSugar is not only flavour in a water ice; it keeps the mixture from setting into a solid block. An under-sweetened batch freezes rock hard, so taste the cooled mixture before freezing and expect it to seem slightly too sweet warm.
- YieldDepends entirely on the missing water and sugar; with a quart of water it would come to roughly 1 1/2 quarts, enough for eight to ten as a small course.
Water ices like this one sat in a different place on the menu than ice cream: through the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries a citrus ice was often served midway through a long dinner as a palate cleanser between the fish or entree and the roast, a course American hostesses borrowed from French service. Orange, lemon and pineapple ices fill much of the frozen-dessert chapters of books of this period, while berry ices are treated as summer luxuries — a pattern often attributed to the ready availability of citrus out of season by rail and steamer, though the connection is inference rather than documented fact.