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Ginger Ale Frappe
Open two bottles of Belfast ginger ale. Add the juice of two lemons and one-fourth of a cupful of granulated sugar. Stir until sugar is dissolved, then turn the mixture into a freezer and freeze. This ice is so stimulating and refreshing it need not be feared by people of delicate digestion.
A two-ingredient water ice, easier now than it was in 1900 — the only real work was the crank freezer. The point of a frappé is coarse, slushy crystals rather than a solid block, so how you freeze it matters more than what goes in.
- "Belfast ginger ale"An imported Irish style, more sharply gingered than the ginger ale most Americans now buy; Cantrell & Cochrane of Belfast were among the best-known shippers. Bottle sizes varied, so treat "two bottles" as roughly 3 cups; use a dry ginger ale and taste before adding all the sugar, since modern brands are already sweet.
- The freezer"A freezer" here is a hand-crank ice cream freezer packed with ice and rock salt, which churns while it chills. In a domestic freezer, pour the mixture into a shallow metal pan and scrape it with a fork every 30 minutes for 2 to 3 hours until it is loose and granular.
- CarbonationThe fizz does not survive freezing, and stirring to dissolve the sugar drives off much of it beforehand. Dissolve the sugar in the lemon juice first, then fold in the ginger ale at the last moment if you want any liveliness left.
- Sugar and freezing pointA quarter cup of sugar in 3 cups of liquid is a very lean syrup, which is why the result sets hard and icy rather than scoopable. More sugar gives a softer frappé; much more and it will not set at all.
- LemonsJuice yield varies from fruit to fruit; two lemons give roughly 1/4 cup. Start there and add more to taste.
- Yield and servingAbout a pint and a half of ice, enough for four to six small glasses. Serve in stemmed glasses immediately after the final scraping; it is a course or a hot-weather refreshment, not a dessert to hold overnight.
Ginger ale reached American tables largely through Irish and Canadian bottlers, and the Belfast label was for decades a shorthand for a particular style of the drink can be found named in some cookbooks of the period much as a modern one might specify a brand of bitters. Water ices and frappés built on bottled mineral waters and ginger ale were a natural extension of that trade: a household with an ice cream freezer and a case of soda could produce an elegant frozen course without cream, eggs or cooking. The closing note about "people of delicate digestion" is the period speaking. Ginger was regarded as carminative and settling, so a ginger-flavored ice could be recommended as wholesome where a rich frozen custard was suspect, and such reassurances seem to have been a familiar note in turn-of-the-century beverage chapters.