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Irish Moss Lemonade
Wash and pick over one fourth cup of Irish moss, and soak until soft in cold water. Drain, and cook in two cups of cold water in a double boiler until dissolved. Strain, and add the juice of one lemon, and one third cup of sugar. Serve hot or cold.
A gelled, faintly viscous lemonade thickened with carrageen seaweed rather than gelatin. It behaves less like a beverage and more like a demulcent drink for a sore throat, which is roughly what it was for.
- Irish mossSold dried as Irish moss or carrageen (Chondrus crispus), usually in health-food or Caribbean groceries; a quarter cup dry is a small quantity of a very light, bulky weed. It is not the same as powdered carrageenan, which will not behave the same way here.
- Wash and pick overDried carrageen carries sand, shell fragments and the occasional bit of other weed. Rinse in several changes of water and pull out anything dark or gritty before soaking, which takes 10-20 minutes in cold water.
- Why a double boilerDirect heat risks scorching the moss and boiling the pan down; gentle indirect heat over simmering water, probably on the order of twenty to thirty minutes, is what "until dissolved" is likely to require. The moss will not vanish entirely, but the water will turn noticeably slippery and slightly cloudy.
- Strain properlyUse a fine sieve or a double layer of cheesecloth while the liquid is hot. Once it cools it thickens and will not pass through anything fine.
- Add lemon off the heatCarrageen sets poorly in strongly acid liquid held hot, so stir the juice and sugar in after straining. Dissolve the sugar while the liquid is still warm.
- Texture and servingChilled, two cups of liquid with this much moss will set at least to a soft jelly, possibly firmer; whisk or shake before serving. Served hot it is simply a thick lemonade. Yield is about two cups, one or two servings.
- SeasoningA third of a cup of sugar to one lemon is tart by modern soft-drink standards but appropriate to the slightly briny background flavour. Taste before chilling, since cold mutes sweetness.
Carrageen moss was gathered off the rocky coasts of Ireland and later New England, dried on the shingle until bleached pale, and sold cheaply by the pound as a thickener and a home remedy; the name is usually traced to the Irish carraigín, "little rock", though a derivation from a place name on the Waterford coast is also repeated. Nineteenth-century cookery and invalid-cookery books used it for blancmange, jellies and throat drinks long before its extracted gum, carrageenan, became an industrial stabiliser in ice cream and dairy products. A soothing lemonade thick enough to coat the throat was both a drink and a mild dose of medicine.