No. 3604

Lemon Water Ice and Grape Fruit Ice

Glace a l'Eau au Citron et Glace au Poncires

Pour into a vessel some syrup made with two and a quarter pounds of sugar and a pint of water cooked to thirty-two degrees; cool off, then add two gills or the juice of six lemons and the peel of four of the finest among them well washed and wiped; let the preparation attain twenty degrees according to the syrup gauge and infuse therein the peels, leaving them for two hours; strain through a silk sieve and freeze.

Another Way.-Proportions: Four pounds of sugar, three gills of water, the peel of fifteen lemons and the juice of twenty-five; cook to twenty degrees of the syrup gauge; infuse the peels in this for two hours; strain the whole through a silk sieve and freeze. This quantity will produce a little more than six quarts.

Grape Fruit.-Prepare this ice the same as lemon water ice, substituting grape fruit for lemons.

← No. 3603 Guanabana, Melon, Medlar, Pear or Plum Water Molded Ices & Large Pieces No. 3605 Orange Water Ice or with Gelatine →

For the Modern Kitchen

Ranhofer assumes a confectioner's toolkit: a syrup hydrometer, a hand-cranked freezer, and an eye for how much sugar a citrus ice can carry. The degrees are the crux of the recipe.

The degrees are Baumé"Thirty-two degrees" and "twenty degrees" refer to a pèse-sirop, or Baumé syrup gauge, not to any temperature. Roughly, 32 Baume is a heavy syrup somewhere near 60 percent sugar; 20 Baume is about 35 percent, which is in the range modern water ices aim at.
How to hit it without a gaugeA cheap refractometer or a hydrometer sold for brewing will read the finished mix. Sorbet sets well at about 26-32 percent sugar (roughly 26-32 Brix); below that it freezes hard and grainy, above it never firms up.
Gills and poundsA gill is half a cup, so two gills of lemon juice is one cup and three gills of water is one and a half cups. Two and a quarter pounds of sugar is about five cups.
The second set of proportions is suspectFour pounds of sugar dissolved in only three gills of water cannot read as low as 20 Baumé; even after the juice of twenty-five lemons goes in, the mix reads far higher. Treat the first method as the working recipe and adjust the second by measurement rather than by trusting the figure.
Zest, not pith"The peel" means the outer colored rind only. Pare it thin, infuse two hours off the heat as directed, and strain; a longer infusion or any white pith turns the ice bitter.
Silk sieveAny fine-mesh strainer lined with a doubled square of cheesecloth does the same work. The point is to catch zest and pulp so the ice freezes smooth.
Freezing"Freeze" here means churning in a salt-and-ice freezer. A modern ice cream machine works directly; without one, freeze in a shallow pan and rake with a fork every twenty minutes for a granita-like texture.
GrapefruitGrapefruit juice is less acid and more bitter than lemon, so the substitution gives a milder ice. Use less peel than the lemon version and taste the mix before freezing, since cold mutes both sugar and acid.
YieldRanhofer gives a little over six quarts for the second set of proportions, a banquet quantity. Scale to a quarter for a household batch.

A Little History

The Epicurean (1894) is Charles Ranhofer's record of some three decades as chef at Delmonico's in New York, and its ice chapter reads like a professional confectioner's notebook: everything calibrated to the syrup gauge, everything scaled to serve a room. The odd title word poncire normally names a large thick-rinded citron in French kitchen usage; Ranhofer presses it into service for grapefruit, a fruit that was only then becoming a commercial crop in Florida and a novelty on American tables. Water ices of this kind, sugar syrup plus juice and zest and nothing else, served as a palate-cleansing course in the long service Delmonico's built its reputation on, and their success rested on the sugar-to-water ratio the hydrometer was there to police.