Orange Ice
Seven oranges, 2 lemons, whites of 4 eggs. Boil 2½ pints of sugar in 2½ quarts of water about 15 or 20 minutes. Cool. Add strained juice and let cool; when almost frozen add beaten egg whites, then add the well beaten eggs and freeze. This will make about 5 quarts of ice. Serve in sherbet glasses or orange cups. Soups. Meats & Eggs
A hand-cranked ice from the era when a five-quart freezer was standard equipment. The unit conversions are straightforward; the raw egg white is the reason this one belongs on the page as a historical document rather than a plan for Saturday.
- Why it fails todayThe beaten whites go into a syrup that has already cooled, and nothing afterwards heats them — freezing does not kill Salmonella, it only halts its growth. Four raw whites suspended in five quarts of ice, served to a table of guests, is exactly the exposure modern food-safety guidance is written against. A current sherbet or ice recipe should be used instead.
- Sugar by volume"2½ pints of sugar" is a dry measure of 5 cups, roughly 2¼ lb. Against 2½ quarts (10 cups) of water that is a fairly light syrup, on the order of 30 percent sugar by weight before the fruit juice goes in.
- The duplicated egg step"Add beaten egg whites, then add the well beaten eggs" reads as a duplication in the printing rather than two separate additions: the ingredient line calls for only the four whites.
- Why the whites were there at allIn a hand-cranked freezer the whites acted as aerator and stabiliser, giving the ice body and keeping it from setting into a solid block of orange-flavoured glass. Modern ices get comparable softness from a churned base with a corn-syrup or invert-sugar fraction.
- Fruit quantitiesExpect roughly 2 to 2½ cups of strained orange juice and about ⅓ cup of lemon from that count — the recipe is a ratio, not a weight.
- Boiling the syrupFifteen to twenty minutes at a boil will reduce the syrup somewhat, so the finished volume is less than the 2½ quarts of water you started with.
- Yield and serviceFive quarts is a party quantity — twenty or more servings in sherbet glasses. "Orange cups" means hollowed orange halves, scraped clean and chilled, refilled with the ice.
Water ices arrived in American households through the ice trade and the hand-cranked freezer, and by the turn of the twentieth century an orange or lemon ice was less a dessert than a piece of table architecture: served in a small glass or a hollowed orange shell, it broke a long dinner between the roast and the game, or closed a summer supper. Whipped egg white was often used domestically for the job now done by stabilisers, which is why so many ice recipes of the period read like meringue instructions at the last step. The heading fragment trailing after the text ": & Eggs" — appears to be carried over from the printed page.