HFF 3.14: Ice

The Challenge: Ice

The Recipe: Strawberry Water Ices from The Art of Confectionery

The Date/Year and Region: Boston, 1865

How Did You Make It: Made a "32 degree" syrup by boiling 2 cups of water with 4 cups sugar (thanks to an 1914 source which actually defined the proportions); mashed 1.5 lbs of strawberries (then finished pulping them in the blender). Stirred both together with another 1/2 cup water, and the juice of 1 small lemon. Froze to solid consisency, put into 2 1-pint molds, and froze again.

Time to Complete: Aside from the freezing, about 20 minutes to mix up.

Total Cost: $3 for the fruit

How Successful Was It?: Very sweet, and with an intense strawberry flavor. Despite having fruit pulp instead of juice (or boiled peel), the texture felt very similar to other water ices I've made. Also, nothing caught fire this time, so I'd say it was "very successful".

The amount this made is a lot for just me, so in the future I'd scale it down by at least half--unless I was setting a full table for an event and needed two of the same molded ice)

How Accurate Is It?:  Modern cheats include the blender and having an electric freezer for the molds. Materials are good; I omitted the cochineal, as the mixture's pink color was perfectly appealing to me, and I didn't want to mix up a whole batch for the few drops called for.

The plating was my idea. Maybe there's too much mint...