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Irish Moss Lemonade
1/4 cup Irish Moss Lemon juice Syrup Soak Irish Moss in cold water, drain and pick over. Add 1½ cups cold water, cook 30 minutes in double boiler and strain. Add lemon juice and , cook 30 minutes in double boiler and strain. Add lemon juice and syrup to taste to½ cup liquid and serve.
A gelled lemon drink from the sickroom chapter, thickened with carrageen seaweed rather than gelatine. The quantities are loose by design: the finished infusion is diluted and sweetened to taste.
- What Irish moss isCarrageen, a dried red seaweed sold whole in health-food shops and Irish groceries, not the refined carrageenan powder used industrially. The recipe gives no quantity; comparable receipts use roughly a small handful of the dried weed to this volume of water.
- Soak and pick overThe recipe sets no time; a short soak in cold water swells the weed. Picking over means removing sand, shell fragments and any dark or bleached pieces; unrinsed carrageen tastes strongly of the shore.
- Double boiler, not direct heatThe extract scorches easily over a flame, hence the indirect heat. Keep the water in the lower pan at a bare simmer for the full 30 minutes; the liquid should thicken somewhat.
- Strain while hotCarrageen extract gels as it cools. Pour it through a fine sieve or muslin straight off the heat, before it begins to set in the pan.
- SyrupPresumably a plain sugar syrup. The recipe leaves both syrup and lemon juice to taste.
- Yield and servingSomewhat less than the 1½ cups of water put in, after cooking and straining; the recipe flavours it in ½-cup portions. It will thicken further as it cools and can be loosened with more cold water.
Irish moss, or carrageen, was gathered along the Atlantic coasts of Ireland and later New England and dried on the rocks; its gelling power made it a common household thickener for blancmanges and invalid drinks before packaged gelatine became cheap. Invalid cookery sections like this one were a fixture of American household manuals into the twentieth century, when nursing the sick at home was ordinary work and the cook was expected to produce something soothing, mildly nourishing and easy to swallow. Carrageen was valued for exactly that: it was thought to be demulcent, easing sore throats and coughs, a reputation it still carries in traditional Irish carrageen puddings.