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Frozen Orangeade
Mix together the juice from five oranges and two lem- Boil together three cupfuls of water and one cupful of sugar and add the orange and lemon juice and beaten white of one egg and freeze. These ices are served in glasses and with spoons, and are very refreshing served at afternoon teas.
The syrup here is boiled, but the egg white is beaten raw and folded into a mixture that is then only frozen. Freezing does not kill Salmonella, and the finished ice is served as-is.
- The raw egg whiteThe whipped white is added after the syrup has been slackened with cold citrus juice, so it never approaches a temperature that would make it safe. Freezing suspends bacterial growth but does not destroy pathogens, and the ice is eaten cold and unheated. If you want a frozen orangeade, work from a current recipe.
- Why the egg was there at allThe white was a texture device, not a flavour: albumen foam keeps a water ice from setting into a solid block of coarse crystals. Modern water ices get the same effect from a higher sugar ratio, from churning, or from pasteurised whites.
- The syrup ratioThree cupfuls of water to one of sugar is a light syrup, and the juice of five oranges and two lemons dilutes it further, so the mixture is low in sugar for a frozen dessert and will tend to set hard and icy rather than scoopable.
- "Two lem-"The line is broken in the original setting; it reads as two lemons. Five oranges give roughly 1 1/4 to 1 3/4 cups of juice, two lemons about 1/4 cup.
- What "freeze" meantIn a household kitchen of this period, freezing meant a pail of ice and rock salt: usually a hand-crank freezer cranked until the mixture is granular, though some ices were simply packed and left to set. The serving in glasses with spoons suggests a spoonable, granular texture rather than a firm mould.
- YieldThe mixture comes to roughly five cups before freezing, which at the small tea-glass portions described would serve perhaps six to eight.
Water ices flavoured with citrus were among the older frozen sweets in the European repertoire, and by the late nineteenth century American household books treated them as the light, respectable end of the ice-cream family: no cream, no custard, nothing rich enough to be out of place at an afternoon tea. Beaten egg white appears as a stabiliser in sorbet and "sherbet" formulas, where the albumen foam keeps the crystals fine without adding fat; domestic recipes such as this one carry the trick without explaining it. The serving note is the period detail worth catching -- "in glasses and with spoons" marks this as tea-table food rather than a dinner course, part of the afternoon entertaining that occupied a good deal of space in turn-of-the-century American cookbooks.