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Oranged Strawberries
Place a layer of strawberries in a deep dish; cover the same thickly with pulverized sugar; then a layer of berries, and so on, until all are used. Pour over them orange juice, in the proportion of three oranges to a quart of berries. Let stand for an hour, and just before serving sprinkle with pounded ice. Some use claret, grape or currant wine instead of orange juice.
A maceration rather than a cooked dish, so the only real variables are the sugar, the resting time and the temperature at the table.
- Pulverized sugarIn 1880s usage this means sugar ground fine, the equivalent of today's superfine or caster sugar. Modern confectioners' sugar contains cornstarch and will cloud the juices; granulated works but dissolves more slowly.
- A quart of berriesA dry quart of strawberries is roughly 1.5 lb, or about 4 cups hulled. Three oranges yield around 3/4 to 1 cup of juice, which is generous — enough to make the dish spoonable rather than merely moistened.
- The hour mattersThe rest is what turns sugar and fruit into syrup. Much less and the berries stay dry; much beyond two hours and they slump, especially with modern varieties bred for shipping rather than firmness. Keep the dish refrigerated while it stands.
- Pounded iceCrushed ice, made in the period by wrapping a lump in a cloth and striking it with a mallet. Sprinkled on at the last moment it chills the surface and melts into the syrup; add it earlier and you get watery fruit.
- Hulling and cuttingThe recipe does not mention hulling or cutting, and the layering implies berries left whole. Large supermarket strawberries can be halved or quartered so the sugar can reach the cut flesh and draw out juice.
- The wine variationThe recipe offers claret, grape or currant wine in place of the orange juice but sets no proportion for them; the same quantity is a sensible starting point. Currant wine was generally a sweet homemade article; a dry red will need a little extra sugar to match.
- YieldThe recipe sets no total quantity, only three oranges to a quart of berries; a quart will serve four to six, in glasses or shallow bowls with some of the syrup spooned over.
Sugared raw strawberries dressed with citrus or wine belong to a long line of nineteenth-century "fruit dishes" that depended on two things becoming more widely available: cheap refined sugar and ice. Commercial ice, cut on Northern lakes and shipped by water and rail, and later manufactured ice, made cold desserts possible in warm weather, and books of this period repeatedly call for it pounded, shaved or laid around a mold. The alternative of claret or currant wine recalls the older English habit of serving strawberries in wine, and points to a household that still made fruit wines at home.