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Lemon Ice
To one pint of lemon juice, add one quart of sugar, and one quart of water, in which the thin rind of three lemons has been allowed to stand until highly flavored. When partly frozen add the whites of four eggs, beaten to a stiff froth.
A plain water ice of the sort that filled the ices chapter of nineteenth-century American books, with one step that no longer passes: raw egg whites folded into a cold mixture that is never heated.
- Why the cautionThe four whites go in raw, into a mixture that is chilled and then frozen and never brought anywhere near a temperature that would kill Salmonella. Freezing does not pasteurise; it preserves. For a lemon ice with body, use a current recipe written with that in mind.
- Sugar measured by volumeA quart of sugar is 4 cups, roughly 1 lb 12 oz. Against a quart of water and a pint of juice that is a very heavy syrup by modern taste, and it will also freeze soft and slushy rather than firm.
- A pint of lemon juiceTwo cups, which takes something like 10 to 12 average supermarket lemons. Zest the three for the infusion before you juice anything.
- The rind infusionOnly the thin yellow rind, no white pith, left to steep in the water until fragrant. This is where nearly all the lemon aroma comes from; the juice supplies acid, the peel oil supplies smell.
- "Partly frozen"The original assumes a hand-cranked freezer packed with ice and coarse salt, at the stage where the mixture is a thick slush that still moves. In a modern churn that is roughly the point at which the paddle starts leaving a trail.
- YieldClose to two quarts before churning, so about ten to twelve small servings of the kind these books intended: an ice was a course, not a bowl.
The Dixie Cook Book belongs to the late-nineteenth-century American compilation tradition, and its ices chapter reflects a period when the northern ice trade is often said to have made packed ice more widely available in southern towns and cities through the warm months. Water ices like this one were distinguished from ice creams by containing no dairy at all, and were served as a light, sharp course between heavier dishes or as a summer refreshment for callers. The addition of beaten egg white to a partly frozen ice is an old technique, generally traced to European confectionery practice, intended to lighten the texture and keep the ice from setting into a solid block; the same purpose is now served by cooked or pasteurised meringue. Lemons themselves, imported by routes usually said to include the Gulf and Mediterranean trade, were a common enough grocery by the 1880s that a recipe could call for a pint of juice without comment.