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Apple Ice
Grate, sweeten and freeze well-flavored apples, pears, peaches or quinces. Canned fruit may be mashed and prepared in the same way.
Barely a recipe at all — three verbs and a list of fruits — which is typical of the ices section in books of this vintage, where the freezing equipment was assumed and the proportions left to the cook. A few things need filling in.
- What the proportions should beFor a water ice of this kind, reckon roughly 4 cups grated fruit pulp to 3/4–1 cup sugar, adjusted to the fruit's own sweetness. Sugar does more than sweeten: too little and the ice freezes into a solid brick, too much and it never sets firm.
- Acid is not optionalGrated apple browns within minutes and tastes flat without it. A tablespoon or two of lemon juice stirred into the pulp as you grate keeps the colour and sharpens a fruit that is mostly sugar and water.
- Quinces must be cookedThe recipe lists quince alongside apple and peach, but raw quince is hard, astringent and close to inedible. Poach and purée it before sweetening. Firm pears benefit from the same treatment.
- "Freeze" meant a crank freezerIn 1883 this was a pail of ice and rock salt around a churned canister — constant agitation, which is what keeps the crystals small. A modern ice-cream machine does the same job. Without one, freeze in a shallow pan and break the mass up with a fork every 30 minutes for about three hours, which gives a granita texture rather than a smooth ice.
- Canned fruitFruit canned in this period was often put up in syrup, so it may arrive already sweet, though the recipe still directs that it be 'prepared in the same way,' sweetening included. Drain modern fruit packed in juice and taste before sweetening; fruit in syrup may need little or no sugar.
- Grating versus blendingA box grater over a bowl gives a slightly fibrous pulp that freezes with some texture. A food processor gives a smoother, more sorbet-like result. Either works; the grater is closer to what the book intended.
- Yield and servingFour cups of pulp makes roughly a quart, serving six. Water ices harden more than custard ice creams, so let it stand 10 minutes at room temperature before scooping.
Water ices — fruit, sugar and no dairy — were the older and cheaper half of the frozen dessert repertoire, and they appear widely in American community cookbooks of the 1870s and 1880s alongside the richer custard-based creams. The Dixie Cook-Book was compiled in Atlanta at a moment when the Northern ice trade and, increasingly, mechanical ice plants were making frozen desserts possible in the South outside of the wealthiest households; the hand-crank freezer, patented in various forms from mid-century, had turned an all-day project into an afternoon one. The extreme brevity here suggests readers were expected to know how to pack a freezer with ice and salt, so the only information worth printing was which fruits would answer.