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Irish Moss Lemonade with Figs
Wash and pick over one half cup of Irish moss and soak for a few minutes in a little cold water. Chop four figs very fine and cook in two cups of water to boiling point, then add the grated rind of one lemon, four tablespoonfuls of lemon juice, one half cup of sugar, and the moss. Cook until the moss is dissolved. Strain and cool.
A demulcent lemonade thickened with carrageen seaweed, closer in texture to a thin barley water than to ordinary lemonade. Two things decide whether it works: how much moss you actually use, and how cold you serve it.
- Irish mossThis is dried carrageen (Chondrus crispus), sold in health-food shops and Caribbean and Irish groceries. A half cup of the dried, crinkled fronds is a loose, airy measure, not a packed one — it weighs very little, perhaps a quarter to a third of an ounce.
- Wash and pick overNot a formality. Dried carrageen carries sand, shell grit and small shore debris, and it is salty from the sea. Rinse in several changes of cold water until the water runs clear, then soak; skip this and the drink tastes of the tide.
- FigsAlmost certainly dried figs, though the recipe does not say so. Four dried figs is roughly 2 to 3 oz depending on variety. Chop them genuinely fine, since they get only a short spell in the pot and you want the sweetness out of them before you strain them away.
- "Cook until the moss is dissolved"It never fully dissolves. What happens is that the fronds swell, soften and go translucent, releasing carrageenan into the water — usually 15 to 20 minutes at a bare simmer. Stop when the liquid coats a spoon slightly; the spent fronds go into the strainer.
- Strain hotCarrageen liquid thickens sharply as it cools and will set to a soft jelly if the ratio runs high. Strain through a fine sieve or cloth while it is still hot and loose, then chill. If the cooled drink is too thick to sip, thin it with cold water rather than reheating.
- LemonGrate the zest before juicing, and take only the yellow. Four tablespoons of juice is about one and a half to two lemons. The acid goes in with the moss here, which is fine for flavour, though very acidic liquids weaken carrageenan's set — one more reason the result stays pourable.
- YieldAbout two cups of finished syrupy lemonade, which is a serving for two over ice, or four if you lengthen it with plain or sparkling water. It keeps two or three days covered in the refrigerator and will thicken further as it sits.
Carrageen, or Irish moss, was gathered off the rocky coasts of Ireland and the Canadian Maritimes and sold dried by the pound in nineteenth-century groceries and druggists' shops alike. Its reputation was medicinal before it was culinary: boiled in milk or water it makes a bland, slippery, faintly marine jelly that was given for coughs, sore throats and invalid diets throughout the Victorian period, and the same gelling property later made refined carrageenan a standard commercial stabiliser in ice cream and chocolate milk. Non-alcoholic drink books of the period had to make the case that a temperance drink could be interesting, and they reached constantly for texture and for the respectable authority of the sickroom emonades, egg drinks and moss jellies. The figs do double duty as sweetener and as a softening of the seaweed's plainness.