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Peach Ice (Also see Fruit Ices)
(Also see Fruit Ices.) Three-fourths ounce granulated gelatin, 4 quarts water, i quart plain syrup, the juice of 6 lemons, 11/½ pints crushed or sliced peach. Dissolve the gelatin in 1 quart boiling hot water, add the rest of the water cold and the other ingredients except the fruit. Put into freezer and freeze till almost hard, then add the crushed fruit and freeze hard. Can be made any flavor desired by using the kind of fruit you want instead of peach.
A soda-fountain water ice, built in bulk for a freezing can rather than a household churn. The numbers are large and the sugar is low by modern sorbet standards, so read the whole thing before scaling.
- Plain syrupAt the fountain this meant the standard simple syrup kept on hand for sodas, and fountain formulas were generally much heavier than the thin 1:1 syrup common now — often close to saturation, though the recipe gives no ratio. A 1:1 syrup will leave the mixture thin and prone to freezing hard.
- Sugar balanceEven with heavy syrup, one quart of it to four quarts of water is a lean mix. Sugar is what keeps an ice scoopable; taste the unfrozen base and expect it to be noticeably sweeter than you want cold, because freezing mutes sweetness.
- GelatinThree-fourths of an ounce is about 21 g, or roughly three envelopes of modern powdered gelatin. It is here as a body-builder to keep the ice from separating into slush and syrup while it sits in the fountain can, not as a setting agent.
- "Freezer"A hand- or motor-cranked can packed in ice and coarse salt, holding a gallon or more. Domestic machines hold 1 to 2 quarts of finished ice, so divide the whole recipe by four or five before you start.
- YieldAs written, close to six quarts of base once the fruit and juice are counted. This is a shop quantity.
- The lemonsSix lemons give something like three-quarters of a cup of juice, and it is doing real work: peaches alone are flat and the acid is what makes the ice read as fruit. Measure the juice rather than counting fruit, since modern lemons vary widely.
- When the fruit goes inThe instruction to freeze almost hard before adding the peaches is the hinge. Fruit pulp added at the start dilutes the base and its water freezes into gritty crystals; folded in near the end it stays in distinct pieces. Keep it cold until that moment.
- PeachesA pint and a half is about 1 1/4 lb of prepared fruit. Peel them — skins toughen and turn leathery in a frozen mix — and toss the slices with a little sugar and lemon while the base churns.
- StorageBecause the sugar is low, this hardens aggressively in a home freezer. Let it stand 10 to 15 minutes before serving, or shave it.
Soda-fountain manuals of the early twentieth century treated ices as a separate department from ice cream: no dairy, no eggs, just water, syrup, acid and fruit, frozen in the same salt-and-ice cans that stood behind every drugstore counter. Gelatin appears in these formulas as a cheap stabiliser, giving the mixture enough body to hold together through a long afternoon of dipping. The closing line, that any fruit may be substituted, is characteristic of the genre; these books sold a system rather than a dish, and a dispenser was expected to run whatever fruit was to hand.