Cranberry Frappé

A three-ingredient water ice that depends entirely on texture: frappé means frozen only to a coarse, spoonable slush, never to a solid block.

• Quart of cranberriesBerries were sold by dry measure. A dry quart of cranberries runs about a pound, roughly 4 cups. Frozen berries work with no change in method.
• Pint and juice quantitiesA pint is 2 cups. The juice of two lemons runs 4 to 6 tablespoons depending on the fruit; start at 4 and taste after the sugar has dissolved.
• SievingForce the hot pulp through a fine sieve or food mill, not a blender alone. Cranberry skins stay gritty however long you cook them, and the skins and seeds are what you are removing.
• Dissolve the sugar hotAdd the 2 cups sugar to the purée while it is still hot from the pan and stir until no grain remains. Undissolved sugar in a frappé reads as sandiness on the tongue.
• Do not cut the sugarSugar here is antifreeze as much as sweetener. Reduce it substantially and the mixture freezes to a hard, unscrapeable brick rather than a mush.
• Freezing without a crank freezerThe recipe names no apparatus; for the period a hand-cranked pail packed with ice and salt, turned only until the mixture is granular, is the likely assumption. A shallow metal pan in the freezer, raked with a fork every 30 minutes for about 3 hours, gives the same coarse crystal. An ice cream machine works if you stop it early, while it is still slushy.
• Yield and servingThe recipe gives no yield; the finished mush comes to something over a quart. Frappés of this kind were served in small stemmed glasses, and it should be scooped and eaten at once.