water ice

Sat Mar 12 05:48:26 UTC 2011

water-ice, n. 1. 1844 --> 1790

I am sure this will not come as a surprise to anyone but me, but,
while I was watching about five minutes of Mario Batali's Ciao
America, there was a "regional" moment. Batali and another chef were
busy preparing what is essentially strawberry sorbet and the they were
trying to figure out the name. They both suggested the "New York" tag
of "Italian Ice", which actually seems to be fairly widespread. For
"South Philly", the associated tag was given as "Water ice". "Water
ice"? Seriously? Yup! Sure enough, "water ice" gets tons of legitimate
hits. In fact, to make matters worse, many of them refer to "Italian
water ice", which makes me wonder about modifier bracketing--is it
[[Italian water] ice] or [Italian [water ice]]? But the very first hit
did tie "water ice" to Philadelphia.

http://goo.gl/jFRRW
> And check out our list of eight great places to find water ices in Philadelphia.

More interesting is the fact that OED has two entries for "water ice".
One is just for ice made from water rather than snow--anyone can come
up with that one. The other:

1. A confection of water and sugar, flavoured and frozen.

There are two quotations, neither associated with Philadelphia AFAICT.

1818    Edinb. Rev. 30 15   Its granular spongy texture‥has‥the
appearance of congealed syrup, or what the confectioners call
water-ice.
1844    T. Masters (title) ,   The Ice Book,‥with‥the most approved
recipes for making superior water-ices and ice-creams.

Wiki is similar, but, again, with a reference to Philadelphia:

> Water ice could refer to:
> 1. The scientific term for the ice formed by water (as opposed to other substances)
> 2. A slang term in the greater Philadelphia area for Italian ice
> 3. An ice climbing term to denote ice made from flowing water (as opposed to ice from precipitation)

In any case, it may be time to update and to include something a bit
more recent. Not sure if a reference to Philadelphia really helps,
given OED evidence.

I found Masters's book in GB:

http://goo.gl/rkquj

Indeed, the book is not from Philadelphia--it was published in London.

Not so for Parkinson's Complete Confectioner (1864)--it was published
by Lippincott in Philadelphia.

http://goo.gl/1PG00

But there is a twist--this is an /American/ edition. Was there an
English edition that preceded it? Indeed there was--Preface to the
English Edition is included on page v.

Robert Wells's Pastrybook & Confectioner's Guide (1889) was also
published in London.

http://goo.gl/8Qdwx

I was going to post this without antedating, but that would just be wrong ;-)

So, during the search, I was surprised to find an earlier source.

http://goo.gl/rerOn
The complete confectioner: or, The whole art of confectionary made
easy. By Frederick Nutt. London: 1807 [Reprinted in NY]

The recipes for water ices (and the respective potential quotations)
can be found on pp. 57-60.

Encouraged by this find, I culled the field a bit further and
immediately discovered that Nutt's book suffered multiple editions,
including one in 1790.

http://goo.gl/0VVYL

Between the two is another interesting citation.

http://goo.gl/9PgUh
Observations on the medical and domestic management of the
consumptive. By Thomas Beddoes. London: 1801
But where the heat of the body is greater than that of the
extremities, it is better to keep the hands and feet warm, and to take
successive draughts of cold water, or cold saline mixture, in an
effervescent state. /Small/ portions of ice-cream or water-ice, I
think preferable. Two teaspoon-fulls of ice will often be sufficient.

The last sentence is the key here, as both "ice cream" and "water-ice"
are considered to be "ice". Trying to convince someone today that "ice
cream" is "ice" may not be an easy proposition (hence the "frozen
custard" terminology for some kinds of ice cream and sorbet/sherbet
for "water-ice").

Virtually all early references to water-ice were published in
London--in fact, the only two exceptions are the 1844 OED citation and
the 1864 American edition of an English book. The latter is the only
early connection with Philadelphia that I found, although there is
little reason to believe that a cookbook /published/ in Philadelphia
would have a significantly different effect on relevant expressions
/in/ Philadelphia than in other parts of the country. I also spotted a
copy of Deseret News from 1891 that mentioned "water-ice" alongside
"ice cream". What seems more likely is that "Italian ice" and other
names for "water ice" were coined/imported further--in fact, "Italian
ice" was a brand name, likely /before/ it became somewhat genericided.
What sounded "better" in New York simply did not take in
Philadelphia--at least, this is the only explanation I have, at the
moment.

I tried to search of instances of "water ice" in sense 2., but after
sorting through 140 spurious hits pre-1807, I found none. Faced with
thousands of hits between 1808 and 1892 (the date of the sole OED
quotation), I gave up.

There is a slight twist on the second OED definition. I dismissed
references to "sea-water ice", largely because I treated "sea-water"
as a pre-existing compound. The problem is that "fresh-water ice"
shows up with a hyphen in the wrong place. And both sea-water ice and
"fresh water-ice" are being contrasted with "mountain ice".

http://goo.gl/iWecx
The Universalist's miscellany, or, Philanthropist's museum, Volume 4. May 1800
Natural History. p. 163
The flat, or driving ice, is composed of sea water: which upon
dissolution, is found to be salt: and is readily distinguished from
the mountain or fresh water-ice, by its whiteness, and want of
transparency. This ice is much more terrible to mariners than that
which rises up in lumps ; a ship can easily avoid the one, as it is
seen at a distance; but it often gets in among the other, which,
sometimes closing, crushes it to pieces. This, which manifestly has a
different origin from the fresh water ice, may perhaps have been
produced in the Icy Sea, beneath the pole.

"Fresh-water ice", with hyphen in the first slot rather than the
second, shows up even earlier, in 1767.

http://goo.gl/9qLZc

These two examples (along with "salt-water ice" going back to 1745)
may be of interest to /someone/, but they don't appear to be of much
use here.

VS-)

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