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Buford Sherbet
1 pint water. 1/4 lb. large raisins. 1/2 stick cinnamon. 3 oranges. 1 cup port wine. 1 lb. sugar. 1/4 lb. figs cut fine. 3 cloves 1 lemon. Boil water and sugar to sirup. Cut raising and figs fine and put in earthen bowl. Pour over these the boiling sirup and let stand until cold. Remove cinnamon and cloves, add to sirup and other fruit the orange, lemon and wine; then freeze.
A wine-and-dried-fruit ice rather than a creamy sherbet, closer in spirit to a frozen punch. The printed text is slightly garbled, so a little reading between the lines is needed before you start.
- The spice instruction is scrambledAs printed, the cinnamon and cloves are removed before they are ever added. The intended method is to boil the stick cinnamon and cloves with the water and sugar, then lift them out before or after the syrup steeps with the fruit. Left in through freezing, the cloves will dominate everything.
- Syrup proportionsOne pint water to one pound sugar is a heavy syrup, roughly 2 cups to 2 1/4 cups by volume. Boil only until the sugar is fully dissolved and clear; there is no candy stage to reach here, and reducing it further will make the finished ice hard and cloying.
- Oranges and lemon mean juiceThe period shorthand assumes strained juice, about 3/4 to 1 cup from three oranges and 3 tablespoons from the lemon. A little grated zest steeped in the hot syrup adds more than the juice alone does.
- Earthen bowlAny non-reactive bowl serves: glass, glazed pottery or stainless. Earthenware was the usual recommendation for standing acidic mixtures, metal vessels, copper especially, being liable to react with fruit acid and wine.
- Alcohol and freezingA cup of port in this volume noticeably depresses the freezing point. Expect a soft, slushy set rather than a scoopable sherbet, and expect it to slump quickly once served. Freezing the base in a churn and then hardening it several hours in the coldest part of the freezer gives the firmest result.
- Still-freezingWilson wrote for a hand-cranked ice-and-salt freezer. Without one, freeze in a shallow metal pan and break up the crystals with a fork every 30 minutes for about three hours; the fruit pieces make a smooth texture unlikely in any case.
- The dried fruitRaisins and figs turn firm and chewy at freezing temperatures. Cut them genuinely fine, closer to a mince than a dice, or the ice reads as gritty rather than fruited.
- YieldAbout a quart and a half, serving six to eight in small glasses. It is sweet and strong enough that a modest portion is the right one.
Mary A. Wilson's New Cook Book came out of her work as a cooking writer associated with the Ladies' Home Journal, and its frozen dessert chapter reflects a moment when the ice-and-salt freezer was still standard equipment in a middle-class American kitchen. A "sherbet" in this period generally meant a water ice given body by fruit, wine or gelatine rather than by cream, and fortified-wine versions with steeped dried fruit and whole spices are of a piece with the punch ices served between courses at nineteenth-century formal dinners. The name Buford is not explained in the text; personal and place names were often attached to hotel and club dishes at the time, and the reference here is unknown.