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Lemon, Ice
Three-fourths ounce granulated gelatin, 4 quarts water, i quart syrup, the of 12 lemons. Dissolve the juice gelatin in 1 quart of boiling water, add the rest of the water cold, and the other ingredients, put in freezers and freeze hard.
A lemon water ice of the old fountain type: no dairy, with gelatin standing in for the smoother texture that eggs or cream would give. The gelatin is the whole trick, and it needs handling first.
- Bloom the gelatin properlySprinkle the three-quarters ounce (about 3 envelopes, or 21 g) of granulated gelatin over a cup of cold water and let it swell for five minutes before adding the boiling quart. Dumping dry granules straight into hot water leaves rubbery threads that never dissolve and show up as strings in the finished ice.
- "Syrup" means simple syrup"Syrup" means plain sugar syrup -- the stock simple syrup of the soda fountain. Formulas of the period vary, but it was generally heavy, on the order of two parts sugar to one of water by weight. One quart of it carries all the sweetness in the batch; a thinner syrup will give a harder, flatter ice.
- Juice of 12 lemonsReckon on 2 to 2 1/2 cups of juice from a dozen average supermarket lemons. Strain it. Seeds and pulp are unpleasant in a water ice and pith turns it bitter as it sits.
- Scale it downAs written this makes roughly 5 1/2 quarts of mix. Quarter it for a domestic machine: 1 quart water, 1 cup syrup, 1/2 cup lemon juice, and a scant 2 teaspoons gelatin bloomed in a little of the water.
- Chill before churningThe mix must be cold, ideally 40F or below, before it goes into the freezer. A warm mix churns for a long time, melts the surrounding ice, and gives coarse crystals.
- "Freezers" and "freeze hard"The original assumes a hand-crank or brine-jacketed can packed in cracked ice and rock salt, roughly 3 parts ice to 1 part salt. In a modern machine, churn until it looks like thick slush, then pack it into a container and hold it at least 4 hours in the freezer; water ices are meant to be served firm, not soft.
- ServingFull batch serves 30 to 40 in fountain portions, scooped into a stemmed glass or, in the period style, floated with a little soda water.
Water ices were a staple of the American soda fountain, cheaper than ice cream because they used no milk and could be made from the same sugar syrup and citrus already stocked for phosphates and lemonades. Gelatin appears in fountain formulas of this era as an economical stabiliser: it holds water in suspension so the ice sets smooth rather than granular, doing cheaply what egg yolk or cream did in a French-style ice. Dispenser manuals of the period printed many such quart-and-gallon formulas, and while the recipe itself does not tell us it came from such a book, the scale is suggestive: the quantities here run to gallons rather than pints.