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Lemon Sherbet
Four quarts of water, 10 lemons, 4½ pounds of sugar. Grate half the lemons as described in lemon ice, squeeze and put rind, juice, half the water and the sugar into a pan, set it on the fire and stir until the sugar is dissolved and it becomes quite warm. Then remove and add the remaining 2 quarts of water and strain into the freezer. If it is not tart enough add a solution of citric acid to suit your taste; then freeze in the usual manner.
A soda-fountain water ice scaled for a shop rather than a household. The proportions are sound by modern standards, but the equipment and vocabulary need translating.
- Scale it downAs written this yields roughly five and a half quarts, enough for a fountain's day trade. A quarter batch — 1 quart water, 2 to 3 lemons, about 18 oz sugar — fits a standard 1.5-quart domestic ice cream machine.
- "Sherbet" here means water iceIn American fountain usage of this era a sherbet was generally fruit, sugar and water, without milk or cream (some formularies allowed egg white or gelatin to lighten it). The modern American supermarket meaning, a fruit ice containing a little dairy, is later; do not add milk.
- Zest, not pith"Grate half the lemons" means the yellow rind only. Steeping it in the warm syrup is the whole point of the step — nearly all the lemon aroma is in the peel oil, and juice alone gives a flat, sour result.
- Warm, do not boilHeat only until the sugar dissolves and the syrup is warm to the finger. Boiling drives off the peel oil and concentrates the syrup, which throws off the sugar balance and leaves the finished ice soft.
- The sugar is structuralAbout 4.5 lb to 4 quarts is roughly 30 percent sugar by weight, which is what keeps a dairy-free ice scoopable rather than a solid block. Cutting the sugar to taste will give you lemon ice cubes.
- "The freezer"A hand-cranked or motorised churn packed with ice and rock salt. Any modern ice cream maker does the same work; failing that, freeze in a shallow pan and rake with a fork every 30 minutes for a granita texture.
- Citric acidFountains kept a stock solution of citric acid in water on hand to correct weak fruit; strengths varied from formulary to formulary. Extra lemon juice does the same job, though it dilutes the syrup slightly.
- Strain properlyPass the mixture through a fine sieve or muslin to catch grated rind, pips and pulp strings, all of which freeze into hard specks and coarsen the mouthfeel.
- ServingBest within a day or two. Give it 10 to 15 minutes out of the freezer before scooping; without fat or egg white it sets firm.
American soda fountains of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries sold far more than carbonated drinks: the dispenser was expected to turn out ices, sherbets, phosphates and syrups from bulk formulas like this one, measured in quarts and pounds because it was shop production rather than home cooking. Lemon is often said to have been the workhorse flavour, cheap, keepable and reliably sharp, and the casual instruction to correct it with "a solution of citric acid" shows how routine the chemist's shelf was to the trade — the fountain in this period was very often attached to a drugstore, and the soda clerk worked with the same acids, extracts and gum syrups the pharmacist stocked. The word sherbet traces back through Turkish and Persian to the Arabic sharba, a drink, and in the older sense it meant exactly that: a chilled sweetened fruit beverage, only later frozen stiff enough to eat with a spoon.