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Raspberry and Currant Ice
4 cups water 1⅓ cups sugar ⅔ cup raspberry juice 1⅓ cups currant juice Prepare and freeze same as Raspberry Ice I. 4 cups water 1 cup sugar Crême de Menthe Ice 1/3 cup Crême de Menthe cordial Green coloring Make a syrup as for Lemon Ice, add cordial and coloring; strain and freeze.
Two water ices from the same page: a raspberry-currant, and a crème de menthe made on a plain lemon-ice syrup. Both are churned ices, not creams, so the freezing method matters more than the flavouring.
- Sugar quantityThe sugar figure in the raspberry and currant ice reads as an impossible amount against 4 cups of water. For a fruit ice of this size, 1½ to 2 cups of sugar is the working range; the crème de menthe version alongside it uses 1 cup to 4 cups water, which is on the lean side and will freeze harder.
- Fruit juice proportionsThe currant-juice figure prints as "11/3" and may be either 1⅓ cups or 1/3 cup against the ½ cup of raspberry. Either way, red currants bring the acid and the set; if you cannot get them, raspberry with a squeeze of lemon approximates the tartness but not the body.
- Juice means pressed, not bottledFruit juice in books of this period generally means crushed fresh fruit strained through cheesecloth or a jelly bag, unsweetened. Bottled currant juice is often sweetened and can throw the sugar balance off.
- "Make a syrup as for Lemon Ice"The lemon-ice syrup directions are not on this page. In general, boil the water and sugar together and cool the syrup before adding fruit juice or cordial, since hot syrup drives off delicate flavour.
- Alcohol and freezingA third of a cup of crème de menthe lowers the freezing point somewhat, so this ice will set softer than the fruit one; churn it and serve it soon rather than expecting a firm scoop.
- Green coloringCrème de menthe is sold both green and white; the colouring instruction presumably guarantees the tint. A drop of food colour is all that is meant.
- Freezing without a crank freezerAn ice-cream machine handles either recipe directly. Without one, freeze in a shallow pan and break up the crystals with a fork every twenty minutes until set.
- Yield and servingThe measured liquids come to roughly 1½ quarts for the fruit ice and a little over a quart for the crème de menthe. Water ices of this kind were served in glasses between courses as well as at the end of a meal.
Water ices were among the plainest things a household could freeze: sugar syrup, fruit juice, and a hand-cranked pail of ice and rock salt. Red currants, grown in nineteenth-century New England kitchen gardens, were valued for their acidity and for carrying more pectin than raspberries, which is part of why the two appear together in jellies, shrubs and ices of the period. Crème de menthe, a sweetened peppermint cordial generally traced to nineteenth-century France, was a fashionable American after-dinner flavour by the time this book appeared.