No. 3611

Granite in Water Bottles with Currants, Cherries, Pomegranates, Etc

Granits en Carafes a la Groseille, aux Cerises, Grenades, etc

Granites are made the same as water ices, flavored with any desired fruits, the sole difference being that they must not be worked and must only attain fourteen degrees of the saccharometer; when the composition is ready pour it in water bottles having very wide necks; pack these in ice with half as much salt as for ordinary ices. Detach from the sides with a small boxwood spatula. Serve in the same decanters or else in glasses.

← No. 3610 Gramolates or Granite with Orange Iced Drinks No. 3612 Grape Fruits a la Madison →

For the Modern Kitchen

Ranhofer is describing a granité — a coarse-crystalled fruit ice, deliberately left unchurned and served straight from the bottle it froze in. Two details carry the whole recipe: a lighter syrup than a sorbet, and no stirring.

The hinge: do not work itA water ice is beaten smooth as it freezes; a granité is left alone so the crystals grow long and gritty. If you scrape or stir it into a paste you have made sorbet instead. The only intervention allowed is loosening the frozen shell from the wall of the vessel so the mass stays loose rather than solid.
"Fourteen degrees of the saccharometer"Ranhofer's saccharometer readings are generally taken as degrees Baume, the confectioner's syrup measure of the period. Fourteen Baume is roughly 25 to 26 Brix, about a quarter sugar by weight. Treat that as an approximation and check with a hydrometer or refractometer if you have one; his water ices are set at a higher density, so a granite base tastes noticeably less sweet.
Why less sugar mattersSugar depresses the freezing point. A weaker syrup freezes harder and faster, and combined with the ban on stirring that is what produces the coarse spicules a granite is judged on. Sweeten much beyond this and the mixture may stay slushy.
Half the usual saltPeriod ice-cream brines are commonly given as roughly one part rock salt to three of crushed ice. Halving the salt gives a milder brine and a temperature closer to freezing, so the mass freezes more slowly and in coarser crystals -- again, deliberate. In a domestic freezer, use a shallow metal pan at the coldest setting and simply leave it, breaking the sheet up with a fork only at the end.
GroseilleIn French kitchen usage this is red currant, not gooseberry (that is groseille a maquereau). Currant, cherry, and pomegranate all share high acidity, which is what keeps a low-sugar ice from tasting flat.
The carafesWide-necked glass water bottles were table service, not equipment; the ice froze in them and went to the table in them. Glass in a salt-ice bath is a thermal-shock risk -- chill the bottles first, or freeze in metal and transfer. The recipe does not say why boxwood was chosen for the spatula; it is dense and fine-grained, and unlike metal it will not scratch the glass. A silicone spatula does the same work.

A Little History

Granité is the French borrowing of Italian granita, from grana, grain — the name is a description of the texture rather than the flavour, and it is the reason the recipe forbids working the mixture. Charles Ranhofer, chef at Delmonico's in New York, published The Epicurean in 1894 as a complete record of a grand restaurant kitchen, and its iced-drink chapter reflects a service pattern now largely gone: between courses of a long dinner, or on a summer afternoon, guests were given something acid, barely sweet, and semi-frozen to reset the palate. Serving it en carafes — frozen in the same wide-necked bottles it was poured from — belonged to a period when ice was cut from lakes, stored in commercial icehouses, and packed with rock salt by the barrel. The fruits named are the tart ones: red currant, cherry, and pomegranate all appear repeatedly in nineteenth-century ice and syrup work for the same reason, since acidity does the flavouring that sugar is not there to do.