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Canton Sherbet
4 cups water 1 cup sugar ¼ lb. Canton ginger ½ cup orange juice 1/3 cup lemon juice Cut ginger in small pieces, add water and sugar, boil fifteen minutes; add fruit juice, cool, strain, and freeze. To be used in place of punch at a course dinner. This quantity is enough to serve twelve persons.
A ginger-scented water ice meant to be served mid-meal rather than as dessert. It needs no dairy and no eggs, so the only real work is the syrup and the freezing.
- Canton gingerThis is stem ginger preserved in heavy syrup, sold in jars as "preserved ginger in syrup" or by its Chinese name. Crystallised ginger will substitute, though it carries more sugar; reduce the cup of sugar to about three-quarters if you use it. Fresh ginger is not the same thing and gives a hotter, thinner flavour.
- The ginger weightThe figure printed for the ginger has lost its fraction and reads as a whole number of pounds, which is far too much for four cups of water. A quarter pound, roughly 4 oz or 115 g of drained preserved ginger, is the sensible reading for this quantity of syrup.
- Boil the syrup, then tasteFifteen minutes at a boil both dissolves the sugar and draws the heat out of the ginger into the water. Taste before adding the juice: if the ginger flavour is faint, give it another five minutes off the heat with the lid on rather than boiling it down further.
- Add juice off the heatThe orange and lemon juice go in after boiling, as directed, and that order matters. Boiled citrus juice loses its fresh top notes and turns faintly bitter.
- Cool completely before freezingChill the strained mixture to refrigerator temperature, ideally overnight. A warm base in an ice cream machine gives coarse crystals and a longer churn.
- Freezing without a machineThe recipe says only "freeze", which in its day would most likely have meant a hand-cranked freezer packed with ice and salt. In a modern churn, freeze until it holds a soft mound, about 20 to 30 minutes. Without a machine, freeze in a shallow metal pan and rake with a fork every 30 minutes for three to four hours, which gives a granita texture rather than a smooth sherbet.
- Save the strained gingerThe pieces fished out of the syrup are still good. Chop them fine for cake or spoon them over the sherbet.
- Yield and serviceTwelve small portions, as stated, because this was served as a palate cleanser between courses. As a dessert it will serve four to six. Serve in chilled glasses; it softens quickly.
Sherbets of this period were sharply divided from ice creams: no dairy, no custard, and often a place in the middle of a formal dinner rather than at the end. The instruction "to be used in place of punch at a course dinner" points straight at the Victorian and Edwardian habit of serving a frozen Roman punch or sorbet between the roast and the game, ostensibly to refresh the appetite. This one is alcohol-free, which may well have recommended it to temperance households and to ladies' luncheons, though that is inference rather than anything the page states. The ginger is the period detail: Canton ginger, preserved in syrup and shipped from southern China in squat stoneware jars, was a familiar import in American grocery stores by the late nineteenth century and turned up in cakes, puddings and confections as a reliable exotic note.