Lemon Ice
8 lemons. 3 pounds of sugar. 3 quarts of water. 8 whites of eggs. Grate the rinds of the lemons into a bowl and squeeze in the juice. Make a boiling syrup of the sugar and half the water and pour it hot to the lemon zest and juice and let remain so till cold. Then add the rest of the water, strain the lemonade into a freezer, freeze as usual, and at last add the whites whipped to a firm froth, beat and freeze again. The scalding draws the flavor of the lemon; it should never, however, be boiled and fewer lemons should be used when they are large. The ice is perfectly white.
The base itself is only lemon, sugar and water, but the finish — eight raw egg whites beaten into an already-frozen ice — is the part that cannot be carried over.
- The raw whites are never cookedEight whites are whipped and folded into the ice at the end, then frozen. Nothing in the method brings them anywhere near a temperature that would kill Salmonella; freezing preserves the bacteria rather than destroying them. The hot syrup is poured over the zest and juice only, long before the whites appear, so it does no work here.
- Volume makes it worseThree quarts of ice carrying eight raw whites is a party-sized batch, served cold to a crowd — the classic conditions for a single contaminated egg to reach many people. If you want a white lemon ice, use a current recipe built on pasteurized whites or a cooked Italian meringue.
- "A freezer" is not an applianceThe freezer of this period was a hand-cranked pail: an inner metal can surrounded by cracked ice and coarse salt, turned by hand with a dasher scraping the walls. "Freeze as usual" assumes the reader knows to churn steadily and to repack the ice and salt as it melts.
- Three pounds of sugar is not excessRoughly six to seven cups against three quarts of water reads as enormous, but sugar is what keeps a water ice scoopable rather than a solid block. Cutting it in a period recipe of this kind gives you a lemon-flavoured brick.
- Scalding the zestThe instruction that matters in the base is pouring the syrup hot over grated rind and juice and leaving it to cool undisturbed. The heat pulls the oils out of the zest; actually boiling the mixture drives them off and cooks a dull, cooked-lemon flavour into the juice.
- Eight lemons is elasticThe author says plainly to use fewer when they are large. Judge by juice volume rather than count.
Water ices reached American pastry kitchens through European confectionery, and lemon was a staple flavour. The whipped whites beaten in at the end lighten the texture and, as the author notes with some pride, keep the colour perfectly white instead of the faint yellow-grey of a juice-only ice. That the whites go in raw is unremarkable for the period. Commercial ice cream and ice making before mechanical refrigeration relied entirely on ice and salt, sugar and speed of sale, and the connection between eggs and enteric illness was not something a pastry cook of the era was writing about.