Orange Ice
3 pints of water. 1 pound of sugar. 5 or 6 oranges according to size. 1 lemon, juice only, if the oranges are sweet. 4 whites of eggs. Make a thick syrup of the sugar and very little water. Peel half the oranges, divide them each in 12 or more by pulling apart by the natural divisions and drop the pieces of orange in the boiling syrup. Grate the yellow zest of the other 3 oranges into a bowl and squeeze in the juice, then pour the syrup from the scalded orange slices also into the bowl through a strainer and keep the pieces on ice to be mixed in at the last. Add the water and lemon juice to the orange syrup in the bowl, strain and freeze. Beat in the whipped whites as usual and when finished stir in the sugared fruit.
This ice is cream--white, tinged with the orange ze--t and juice. Use the burnt almond cream for the outside and fill with the orange ice.
A hotel-style water ice, lightened with meringue and built into a bombe. The structure is simple once you see it: a candied-orange syrup, diluted and churned, with beaten whites folded in near the end.
- The hinge: fold the whites in lateThe whites go in when the ice is nearly frozen and stiff enough to hold them, not into the liquid base. Added too early they simply dissolve and the ice sets dense; added at the right moment they lighten the mass and give the pale, creamy body the recipe describes.
- Raw egg whiteThe four whites are never heated — the hot syrup is diluted with three pints of water before anything is churned. If that matters to you, use pasteurized whites or a carton of pasteurized egg white, which whip nearly as well.
- "A thick syrup"Cook the pound of sugar (about 2 1/4 cups) with only a small amount of water, perhaps 1/2 cup, until it is visibly thick and syrupy; the recipe gives no temperature. Its only job here is to be concentrated enough to scald and sweeten the orange sections without turning them to mush.
- Sugar ratio, and why it freezes hardOne pound of sugar to three pints of water plus juice is a lean syrup by modern sorbet standards, and it will freeze quite firm and icy. The whipped whites are the period's answer to that problem; if the finished ice is still stony, temper it 10 minutes in the refrigerator before serving.
- ZestGrate only the colored outer layer of three oranges — any white pith carries bitterness that a low-sugar ice cannot hide. Grate directly into the bowl so the fragrant oils are not left on the board.
- Freezing equipmentWritten for a hand-crank freezer packed with ice and salt. A modern ice cream machine works; without one, freeze in a shallow pan and stir hard with a fork every 30 minutes, folding in the whites once the mass is thick.
- The candied sectionsKeep the scalded orange pieces cold and drained, and stir them in only after churning stops. Wet, warm fruit added earlier will bleed syrup and leave hard shards of ice around each segment.
- The burnt almond cream shellThe last line makes this the filling of a bombe: line a chilled mold with a firm layer of burnt almond ice cream, fill the center with the orange ice, cover, and freeze solid before unmolding. The definite article suggests a burnt almond cream recipe given elsewhere in the book.
- YieldAbout two quarts before the whites go in, closer to three after — twelve or more servings, or enough to fill a two-quart bombe mold with its cream lining.
Water ices like this one belonged to the pastry department of the late nineteenth-century American hotel and restaurant, where a cook worked from a hand-cranked freezer and built the results into molded bombes for the dining room. The device here — beating whipped egg whites into a churning ice — was the standard professional trick for making a lean sugar-and-water ice eat lightly rather than like a block; the meringue-lightened version is often grouped with the sorbets proper. The instruction to candy half the oranges in syrup and reserve them on ice for the finish, rather than simply juicing them all, shows the same commercial logic: the pieces give the plate visible fruit and a second texture at almost no extra cost. Oranges themselves had become a reasonably reliable winter commodity in American cities thanks to rail shipment from Florida and California, which is why a book of this kind can call for five or six of them without comment.