No. 3605

Orange Water Ice or with Gelatine

Glace a l'Eau a l'Orange et a la Gelatine

Take one quart of syrup at thirty-two degrees, five gills of orange juice, the peel of a large orange and one gill of lemon juice. Infuse for two hours, bring it to eighteen or twenty degrees of the syrup gauge, and color with a little carmine; strain through a silk sieve and freeze.

Another Way.-Six pounds of sugar, four quarts of water, thirty oranges, using the peel of sixteen, and the juice of twelve lemons. Infuse for two hours, bring to twenty degrees, strain through a silk sieve and freeze. This will make about eight quarts.

With Gelatine.-Have one quart of water, one pound of sugar, the peel and juice of two oranges, the juice of four lemons, a sheet of gelatine weighing a quarter of an ounce, previously dissolved in a little water, then strained through a fine sieve. The ice may be flavored with extract of orange and the lemon replaced by citric acid.

← No. 3604 Lemon Water Ice and Grape Fruit Ice Molded Ices & Large Pieces No. 3606 Pineapple Water Ice →

For the Modern Kitchen

Ranhofer assumes a professional ice room: a saccharometer, a syrup kept on hand at a fixed density, and a hand-cranked pot freezer. The proportions still work, but the measurements need translating.

The density reading is the whole recipe"Thirty-two degrees" and "eighteen or twenty degrees" are Baume readings from a syrup gauge, not temperatures. A 32 Baume stock syrup is a heavy one, on the order of three parts sugar to two parts water by weight; the finished sorbet base is diluted with juice and water down to 18-20 Baume, which corresponds to roughly 33-36 percent sugar. Below that the ice freezes hard and grainy; above it, it will not set.
If you have no hydrometerA refractometer reading of about 33-36 Brix is the equivalent, and 18-20 Baume is often approximated as 1.14-1.16 specific gravity. Failing both, taste: the unfrozen base should be distinctly sweeter than you want the finished ice to be, since cold mutes sweetness.
GillsA gill is half a cup. Five gills of orange juice is 2 1/2 cups, one gill of lemon juice is 1/2 cup.
CarmineCochineal-derived red colouring, still sold as carmine or E120, though many cooks now use a few drops of any red food colour or simply leave the ice pale. It is an insect-derived product and worth declaring to guests who avoid them.
Sheet gelatineA quarter-ounce sheet is about 7 g, roughly four modern leaves or one envelope of powdered gelatine. Bloom it in cold water, dissolve in a little of the warm syrup, and strain in; it makes the ice smoother and slower to melt rather than setting it.
Silk sieveA fine chinois or a double layer of muslin does the same job. The point is to remove peel, pulp and any undissolved gelatine, which would otherwise show as strings in the finished ice.
The infusionThe recipe does not say whether the syrup is warm or cold; two hours' steeping of the peel extracts the oil without drawing much bitterness. Pare the zest with a peeler and take none of the white pith.
FreezingAn ice-cream machine handles this in 20-30 minutes. Without one, freeze in a shallow pan and break up the crystals with a fork every 30 minutes for about three hours; the result is closer to a granita than to Ranhofer's smooth ice.
YieldsThe first version makes about two quarts, the second about eight as stated, and the gelatine version about a quart and a half. Water ices of this density are best served the day they are churned.

A Little History

The Epicurean (1894) is Charles Ranhofer's record of thirty-odd years as chef at Delmonico's in New York, and its ices section reads like an inventory of a working confectionery department rather than a home cookbook. Water ices, glaces a l'eau, were the lighter half of the French frozen repertoire: fruit juice, sugar syrup and nothing else, distinguished from the cream ices by containing no dairy at all. The syrup gauge Ranhofer relies on was standard equipment in a nineteenth-century pastry kitchen, since sugar density governs freezing point, and a confectioner who could read Baume could produce the same texture every service without guessing. The gelatine variant is a practical concession: a small amount of it slows melting on the plate and helps a molded ice hold its shape through a long dinner, which is exactly what the surrounding section of the book is concerned with. The suggestion that lemon be "replaced by citric acid" reflects the same commercial logic, since crystalline citric acid was cheap, shelf-stable and consistent in a way that a crate of lemons was not.