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Ices, Fruit
Made same as lemon ice omitting 6 of the lemons, and when frozen almost add 1½ pints of American Crushed hard. hard add 1½ pints of American Crushed Fruit, any flavor desired, and almost freeze Fruit, any flavor desired, and freeze hard. See formulas for raspberry See formulas for raspberry ice and orange ice. The sherbet is the same except it has the addition of 1 quart of milk besides the other ingredients, and, like the ices, can be made either plain lemon or any fruit flavor wanted by the same process. The presence of the milk gives it whiteness and makes it smoother and more delicious than the ices. See formula for peach and strawberry sherbet.
This entry is a variation instruction rather than a standalone formula: it assumes you already have the book's lemon ice in front of you, and the text as printed is badly mangled by duplicated typesetting. What follows untangles it.
- Read past the duplicationThe typesetting repeats itself mid-sentence. The sense is: make the lemon ice base but leave out six of the lemons, freeze it until it is nearly firm, then stir in 1½ pints of crushed fruit and finish freezing hard. The stray "½ pints" is a printer's echo of the 1½, not a second addition.
- The hinge is when the fruit goes inThe crushed fruit is added near the end of freezing, not at the start. Fruit purée and its sugar stirred in early depresses the freezing point of the whole batch and slows everything down; added at the semi-frozen stage it disperses into a stiff base and keeps its own colour and flavour distinct.
- American Crushed FruitA commercial soda-fountain supply: fruit crushed and packed in heavy sugar syrup, sold to fountains in a range of flavours. The nearest modern equivalent is a thick fruit preserve or a sweetened fruit compote, not fresh fruit and not a thin fountain syrup. If you substitute fresh crushed fruit, add sugar, or the ice will freeze grainy and hard.
- Omitting six lemonsThe referenced lemon ice formula is not reproduced here, so the total number of lemons is unknown; removing six is evidently meant to pull the citrus back and cede the lead to the crushed fruit.
- "Freeze hard"In a fountain of this era that meant a hand- or motor-cranked freezer packed with ice and rock salt, churned until stiff, then drawn off and packed. In a domestic machine, churn to soft-serve consistency, fold in the fruit, churn briefly again, then harden in the freezer for at least three or four hours.
- The sherbetSame base plus 1 quart of milk. Note that this is milk, not cream — American fountain sherbet was defined by a small dairy addition, which is what the text means by whiteness and smoothness. Add the milk cold with the rest of the base, not to the semi-frozen mixture.
- CurdlingMilk plus a lemon-and-fruit base is an acid-and-dairy combination. Have both thoroughly chilled, add the milk to the syrup rather than the reverse, and freeze at once; a mixture left standing at room temperature will separate and freeze speckled.
- YieldNone is given, because a fountain worked in whatever the freezer held. Since the lemon ice base is not reproduced here, the finished volume cannot be calculated; measure your base before deciding whether it and the extra quart of milk will fit a domestic machine in one batch.
Soda-fountain manuals like this one were trade books, written for the dispenser behind the marble counter rather than the cook at home, which is why the entry reads as an amendment to another formula and why it names a supply item — American Crushed Fruit — as casually as it names sugar. Crushed fruits in heavy syrup were a staple of the fountain trade from the late nineteenth century, letting a dispenser carry a dozen flavours through the year without touching fresh produce. The distinction the entry draws between an ice and a sherbet is the older American one: an ice is fruit, sugar and water, while a sherbet is the same with a little milk added, sitting between the ice and the ice cream in richness. That definition is still, roughly, what United States labelling rules mean by sherbet today, which is why an American sherbet contains dairy and a British or French sorbet does not.