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Rhubarb Sherbet
liked by some people, and cloves or cinnamon by others, as an additional flavour.
LEMONADE. 1239. Pare two tolerably sized lemons as thin as possible, put half of the rind of one into a pint of hot, not boiling, water, and cover it over for three or four hours. Rub some fine sugar on the lemons to absorb the essence, and put it into a china bowl, into which squeeze the juice of the lemons, adding sugar enough to sweeten to the palate, and when cool it is fit to drink.
A short, old-fashioned lemonade built on two extractions: a warm infusion of the peel and sugar rubbed against the fruit to take up the oils. Both matter more than the juice.
- The hinge: hot, not boilingWater below the boil is enough to draw the aromatic oil out of the rind; the instruction is presumably meant to avoid drawing bitterness from any white pith left on the peel. Cover and leave it three to four hours as directed.
- Pare thin"As thin as possible" means only the coloured zest, no pith. A vegetable peeler held flat against the fruit does it faster than a knife.
- Rubbing sugar on the lemonsThis is the old technique now usually called oleo-saccharum: sugar crystals scour the oil from the skin of the whole fruit. The text calls for fine sugar, and says to rub the fruit before you halve and juice it.
- Sugar quantityNone is given. For a pint of infusion and the juice of two lemons, start around 3 to 4 tablespoons and adjust; the sweetness is meant to be judged by taste, as the text says.
- Strain before servingLift out the rind and pass the whole through a fine sieve to catch pips and pulp. The result is cloudy but should not be gritty.
- YieldRoughly a pint and a quarter once juice and sugar go in. Serve chilled; the recipe predates domestic refrigeration and only asks that it be cool.
- A pintIn a British book of this period a pint is 20 fl oz, about 570 ml, not the 16 fl oz US pint.
Lemonade of this kind, made by infusion rather than by simply mixing juice, sugar and water, appears in nineteenth-century British household books. The trick of rubbing sugar against the peel to capture the essential oil is an old one, and survives today in bar practice as oleo-saccharum.