Strawberry Water Ice (1844)
Reader ratingsStrawberry water ice from Thomas Masters’s Ice Book of 1844: strained strawberries, lemon and syrup frozen soft, in the flavor one of London’s first street ice sellers sold most.
- Recipe makes
- About 1½ pints, 6 servings
- Prep
- Cook
- Total
Make the syrup first and let it cool, about 30 minutes. The mixture chills for an hour, churns for 25 to 30 minutes and firms in the freezer for about 2 hours.
Strawberry water ice with fresh strawberries.
The story behind the recipe
Strawberry is the only flavor named in Henry Mayhew’s account of London’s first street ices. When he interviewed the sellers around 1850, one of them told him strawberry was what he sold most. Ices went for a penny each. Thomas Masters’s Ice Book of 1844 has the water ice to match: fruit, lemon, water and syrup, with no cream at all.
A pottle of scarlets
Masters calls for “one pottle of scarlet strawberries,” the juice of two lemons, half a pint of water, a pint of clarified sugar and “a little colour.” A pottle was the small cone-shaped basket that soft fruit was sold in, and scarlets were the berries that, in his strawberry ice cream, “are considered the best.” The street sold strawberries by the pottle too: “Good strawberries are 2d. a pottle in the streets when the season is at its height,” Mayhew writes, about £1.60 today by UK consumer prices. The coloring, printed a few pages earlier, is cochineal boiled with salts of wormwood, with cream of tartar and alum stirred in off the fire.
Read more about this recipe
Strain it
The recipe as printed says only “Freeze.” A correction at the front of the book adds that strawberry and raspberry ices “require straining,” so the seeds come out before the freezing.
Every water ice in the book starts from the same clarified sugar: twelve pounds of sugar boiled for ten minutes in twelve pints of water with half an egg white beaten in. “This is used in all water ices,” Masters writes.
Making it today
We make half his batch, reading the pottle as about one and a half pounds of berries, and a small syrup in place of his twelve-pound stock, without the egg white. Like modern sorbet makers, we sieve out the seeds and chill the mixture before churning. The street trade it fed is in How Did a Cook Make Ice Cream in Four Minutes in 1844?, and a gentler ice from the same book is the Lemon Ice Cream (1844).
STRAWBERRY WATER ICE.
One pottle of scarlet strawberries, the juice of two lemons, half a pint of water, one pint of clarified sugar, a little colour. Freeze. One quart.
TO CLARIFY SUGAR.
Take twelve pounds of sugar, twelve pints of water, half the white of one egg, well beaten up, and add it to the water. Boil ten minutes. This is used in all water ices.
Recipe makes: About 1½ pints, 6 servings
Ingredients
For about 1½ pints, 6 servings. Quantities are shown as written.
Quantities as written here, for about 1½ pints, 6 servings.
- Caster sugar, for the syrup5 oz
- Water, for the syrup7 fl oz
- Strawberries12 oz
- Lemon1
- Cold water5 fl oz
Measurement notes
Ingredients as written here
- 5 oz caster sugar, for the syrup
- 7 fl oz water, for the syrup
- 12 oz strawberries
- 1 lemon
- 5 fl oz cold water
Equipment
Small saucepan- Mixing bowl and potato masher, or a blender
Fine sieve
Citrus juicer- Ice-cream machine
- Freezer container with a lid
Instructions
Put the bowl of your ice-cream machine in the freezer the day before, if it needs it.
Put the caster sugar and the water for the syrup in the saucepan. Stir over medium heat until the sugar dissolves, then simmer for 2 minutes. Let the syrup cool completely.
Rinse and hull the strawberries. Mash them well in the bowl, or blend them, and rub the pulp through the fine sieve with the back of a spoon. Discard the seeds left in the sieve.
Squeeze the lemon and add the juice to the strawberry purée with the cooled syrup and the cold water. Stir well.
Cover and refrigerate for 1 hour, until very cold.
Churn in the ice-cream machine until it is thick and holds its shape, like soft snow, 25 to 30 minutes.
Scrape it into the freezer container, cover and freeze for about 2 hours. Let it stand at room temperature for 10 minutes before serving.
Nutrition
110calories per serving
- Recipe makes
- About 1½ pints, 6 servings
- Servings
- 6
Estimated per serving from USDA FoodData Central values for sugar, strawberries and lemon juice.
Recipe notes
When adjusting quantities
Half of Masters’s batch, reading his pottle of strawberries as about 1½ lb. Scale the syrup with the fruit.
Notes
Quantities mentioned in these notes don’t change when you adjust the servings.
Caster sugar is superfine sugar. Taste the mixture before chilling; very ripe berries may want a little less lemon, sharp ones a spoonful more syrup. Masters colored his ices; we leave the coloring out. Contains no milk, egg or gluten.
Scaling changes the ingredients only; pan sizes and cooking times need their own judgment. To adapt this recipe further, try the recipe tool at TuneMyRecipe (opens in a new tab), our sister site.
Sources and attribution
After Thomas Masters, The Ice Book (London, 1844), Strawberry Water Ice and To Clarify Sugar
Recipe details
- Course
- Dessert
- Dish family
- Drinks, Punches & Ices
- Region
- British
- Era
- 19th century
- Source decade
- 1840s
- Main ingredient
- Fruit
- Difficulty
- Easy
- Season
- Summer