Recipe of the Month: Sicilian Sorbet (1920)
Summer calls for cool drinks and cools eats. This month’s recipe comes from Fannie Farmer’s The Boston Cooking School Cook Book (1920), third edition, third printing.
The Boston Cooking School Cook Book (1920) by Fannie Farmer. University of Michigan Library, Special Collections Research Center (Janice Bluestein Longone Culinary Archive).
This recipe for “Sicilian Sorbet” appears as part of the chapter on “Ices, Ice Creams, and Other Frozen Desserts,” which Farmer opens by defining various kinds of frozen desserts. I recommend clicking through to read this page, as it’s quite interesting and sometimes surprising. Typically, I would describe any frozen fruit juice concoction as sorbet, but in Farmer's terms, sorbet is, “strictly speaking, frozen punch,” which in turn is defined as “water ice to which is added spirit and spice,” and water ice is defined as, “fruit juice sweetened, diluted with water, and frozen.” However, Farmer also notes that sorbet is sometimes used to refer to water ice, “where several kinds of fruit are used." That seems to be the case with today's "Sicilian Sorbet":
1 can peaches 1 cup sugar 2 cups orange juice 2 tablespoons lemon juice Press peaches through a sieve, add sugar and fruit juices. Freeze and serve.
Juicing lemons and oranges is quite straightforward, but pressing canned peaches through a sieve turned out to be an unexpected challenge!
5 Minute Recipes for ACME. The 5 Minute Freezer. [Culinary ephemera : refrigerators]. Box 63. University of Michigan Library, Special Collections Research Center (Janice Bluestein Longone Culinary Archive).
(from curator Juli McLoone)