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Orange Water Ice
Put the juice of four oranges and the grated rinds of three into a basin with one breakfast cupful of water, add the juice of three lemons and one pint of syrup, stir well, then pass it through a fine sieve into a mould, pack it in ice, freeze and when quite set turn it out onto a dish, and serve.
A straightforward citrus sorbet from the Waldorf's pastry side, written for a kitchen with an ice cave and a hand-cranked freezer. The measurements are sound; only the equipment and one vague word need translating.
- "One pint of syrup"This means stock sugar syrup, a standing preparation in hotel kitchens of the period — sugar and water boiled until clear, though the strength varied from kitchen to kitchen. Two cups of that, against roughly a cup and a half of citrus juice and a cup of water, puts the finished ice in the range of a scoopable sorbet.
- Breakfast cupfulA breakfast cup is larger than a teacup: reckon 8 to 10 fl oz. Eight ounces is the safe reading here, since the syrup is already doing the work of sweetening and body.
- Strain the zest, don't skip itThe grated rind of three oranges carries much of the aroma; juice alone gives a thinner result once frozen. Let the mixture stand twenty minutes or so before sieving so the oils have time to move into the liquid, then press the zest against the sieve.
- "Pack it in ice, freeze"Freezing is done with crushed ice and coarse salt, roughly three parts ice to one of salt by volume; as written the mould itself is packed in the ice, though period kitchens often churned such mixtures in a pail freezer before moulding. In a modern kitchen this is an ice-cream machine; without one, freeze in a shallow pan and stir hard with a fork every thirty minutes until granular.
- The mouldSieving directly into the mould only works with the salt-and-ice method, where the mixture is agitated in place or left to set solid. If you churn in a machine, pack the finished ice into a chilled mould, cover with parchment, and firm it in the freezer for two to three hours before unmoulding.
- Turning outDip the mould in cold water for a few seconds rather than hot — hot water melts a glassy skin on the surface. A cloth wrung out in warm water, wrapped round the mould for a moment, works as well.
- Yield and servingAbout a quart, serving six to eight as a dessert or considerably more as a between-courses ice, which is how it would have appeared on a long Waldorf menu. Sorbet made without stabilisers is best the day it is made; it turns hard and icy by the second day.
Water ices — fruit juice, sugar syrup and water, with no dairy — were the older and plainer branch of frozen desserts, and by the 1890s a well-run American hotel served them in two capacities: as a dessert in their own right and as a palate-cleansing course dropped in midway through a long dinner, the *sorbet* or *punch* course. Oscar Tschirky — maître d'hôtel rather than chef, though the book carries his name — presided over a house that used such ices in quantity, which may explain the offhand "one pint of syrup": stock syrup was a standing preparation rather than something a cook measured out from scratch. Freezing with ice and salt was the technique that had made ices possible for some two and a half centuries before mechanical refrigeration, and by the 1890s it depended on a commercial ice trade that cut lake ice in winter and stored it in insulated houses for summer use — a trade near its peak when this book was written, and much diminished within a generation.