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Orange and Cocoanut Ice
1 pint of port wine, 1 pint of water. 1 pound of sugar. 8 ounces of desiccated cocoanut--the sugared kind free from oil must be used. 4 oranges. 2 lemons. Red fruit juice or coloring.
Make a hot syrup of the water and sugar. Slice the oranges and lemons small and throw away the seeds, put the slices in a bowl with the desiccated cocoanut, pour the hot syrup over them and let steep a short time. Then strain the flavored syrup into a freezer, add the wine and coloring to make it light pink and freeze. Make the scalded orange and lemon slices and cocoanut cold on ice and stir them into the sherbet when nearly frozen, then pack down the freezer to freeze the contents firm.
To serve individually place the frozen custard in champagne glasses, spread out to make a border, and the sherbet pile up in the middle. And "iced--pudding" is no better name, although the language containing no other for such a compound, the English have had to use it. But their case is different, they have deep rooted respect for ancient pudding, and ice cream does not seem to be degraded by being so called. Sydney Smith in explanation of the exact stage of his convalescence wrote to a friend that he was past the gruel point, past panada, and had just arrived at pudding. Thackeray could write of puddings, as did Herrick, Burns, Byron even, and there is something about solid pudding in Shakspeare, but that does not help the matter with our people's association of ideas. Iced pudding is base, it is food; ices, ice--creams, are noble, they are etherial, they are delicious.
A wine sherbet with citrus and coconut folded in, from the era of the hand-cranked freezer. The main obstacle is the alcohol, which fights the freezing.
- The hinge: alcohol and freezingA pint of port against roughly two pints of syrup is a lot of alcohol for a home-frozen ice, and it will not set as hard as a plain sherbet. Chill everything thoroughly before churning, and expect a soft, spoonable texture rather than a scoopable one. If you want it firmer, cut the port back and make up the volume with water.
- "Freezer" means the crank machineThe original assumes a bucket freezer with an ice-and-salt jacket, hence "pack down the freezer" to ripen the finished ice. A modern ice cream machine does the same work; transfer to a chilled container and hold in the coldest part of the freezer for an hour or two to firm up.
- Desiccated cocoanut"The sugared kind free from oil" is sweetened shredded or flaked coconut, the dry supermarket sort. Avoid moist macaroon-style coconut in heavy syrup and avoid unsweetened desiccated coconut, which will drink the syrup and turn gritty.
- Steeping the fruitSlice the oranges and lemons thin, peel and all, and steep only a short time as directed. Long contact with hot syrup pulls bitterness out of the pith and rind, which will dominate the port.
- StrainingPress the fruit and coconut only lightly when straining, then strain again through a fine sieve. Any coconut fibre left loose in the base makes the frozen texture stringy.
- Colouring"Red fruit juice" here means a spoonful of raspberry, currant or cherry juice, used purely for the pink tint. Port plus citrus already gives a muddy tan, so a little raspberry juice does more than food dye and costs nothing in flavour.
- The serving noteThe instruction to line champagne glasses with "frozen custard" refers to a frozen custard made separately and not given here; no flavour is specified. Serve in coupes with a border of the custard ice and the pink sherbet heaped in the centre, or on its own.
- YieldAbout one and a half quarts of base, or eight to ten small glasses served in the manner described.
- The closing paragraphEverything after the serving instruction is the author's aside on why Americans refuse to call an ice a pudding. It is commentary carried over from the surrounding chapter, not part of the method.
The American Pastry Cook belongs to the trade literature of the turn of the century, written for hotel and restaurant pastry departments rather than home cooks, which is why a recipe can assume a frozen custard standing ready and champagne glasses by the dozen. Wine ices were a fixture of the long formal dinner, served as a cold pause between courses, and port, sherry, claret and maraschino versions are all recorded; desiccated coconut had become a comparatively cheap, shelf-stable pantry staple by the end of the nineteenth century. The digression at the end turns on the contrast the author draws between the English "iced pudding" and the American "ices" and "ice creams"; the Sydney Smith line about being "past the gruel point" is attributed to that clergyman and wit, though no source is given.