Apple Ice
To be served in combination with a frozen custard such as the preceding three. 20 ounces of cored and sliced apples. 12 ounces of sugar. 1 quart of water. 1 lemon.
Use for this purpose only ripe and sweet apples Make a boiling syrup of the sugar and a cupful of water and throw in the apple quarters or slices and the lemon--cover with a lid and simmer slowly till done without stirring or breaking Strain out the apples and set them on ice. Add the balance of the water to the syrup and freeze it without much beating, then throw in the apples and finish the freezing. This makes a whitish ice. The apples should not be frozen very hard.
A water ice built around poached apple pieces suspended in a lemon syrup, meant as a foil to a rich frozen custard rather than a dessert on its own. The instruction that matters most is the one about beating: this is deliberately churned as little as possible, so the apples stay whole and the ice keeps a coarse, granular body.
- Weights in cups20 oz of cored, sliced apple is roughly four medium apples once prepped, and 12 oz of sugar is about 1 3/4 cups. The syrup is made with only a cupful of the quart of water; the remaining three cups go in after poaching.
- The lemon is ambiguousThe text says only "1 lemon" and then lists it among the things thrown into the syrup, which suggests the fruit cut up and simmered whole, peel included, then strained out. If you prefer a cleaner result, pared zest plus the juice added off the heat gives the same flavour without bitterness from the pith.
- Apple choice"Only ripe and sweet apples" is a real constraint here, because the slices must hold their shape through simmering. Firm varieties such as Golden Delicious, Braeburn or Gala keep their edges; softer apples such as McIntosh break down into sauce and ruin the point of the dish.
- Simmer untouchedCover, keep the syrup barely moving, and do not stir. The slices are done when a knife slides through with no resistance, usually 8 to 15 minutes depending on thickness. Lift them out with a slotted spoon rather than pouring through a strainer.
- "Set them on ice"This means chill thoroughly, which in a modern kitchen is the refrigerator or a bowl over ice water. Warm apples dropped into a half-frozen ice will melt it back and coarsen the texture.
- Freezing without a machineIn an ice cream maker, run the diluted syrup until it is thick and slushy, fold in the cold apples, then churn only briefly. Without a machine, freeze the syrup in a shallow pan and rake it with a fork every 30 minutes until granular, then stir the apples through and give it one more short spell in the freezer.
- Do not freeze it hardThe apple pieces are meant to stay tender enough to eat with a spoon; frozen solid they turn to icy chips. Serve within an hour or two of finishing, and if it has been in the freezer overnight let it stand 15 minutes before serving.
- Yield and servingAbout 1 3/4 quarts, enough for eight to ten portions as an accompaniment. A small scoop set beside one of the frozen custards the recipe refers to is the intended use.
American pastry manuals of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries drew a firm line between ices and ice creams: an ice was fruit, sugar and water, cheap to make and used as a palate-cutting counterweight to the egg-and-cream frozen custards that a professional shop sold at a premium. The technique of poaching fruit in a heavy syrup and then folding the intact pieces into the freezing mixture is older than either category, belonging to the confectioner's tradition of candied and preserved fruit; the same method survives in modern sorbets that carry chunks of poached pear or quince. Apples earned their place in books like this one for the same reason they dominated American home cooking generally: they stored for months in a cellar and were available when no other fruit was.