A champagne ice isn't such a high-roller refreshment as it sounds. To begin with it's a rank solecism to freeze any but the most inexpensive of champagnes, and then you don't require many other good things for your ice--the champagne is enough in itself. You just make a very strong and sweet lemonade--a quart of it and half freeze it; then pour in the champagne and wholly freeze the mixture. Get the champagne into the freezer as soon as you can after it is opened before its volatile gas escapes. If you prefer a more hilarious refreshment just keep on with your use of intoxicants by adding after the champagne a wineglassful of brandy. Also, if you like, you may add the beaten whites of eggs, _ad libitum_.
While we are on the subject of frozen champagne and the entering wedge has done its work let me speak a good word for champagne with strawberries. Freeze together a quart of champagne and a pint of sugar syrup. Just at the last add one pint of strawberries which have been halved and quartered and marinaded in a little brandy and sugar for about fifteen minutes. Cherries used in this way will make you ready to declare that till you tried it you didn't know how to live.
A claret sherbet is even better than it sounds if you make it in this way: Rub the peel of two oranges off with plenty of loaf sugar and then make a syrup of this sugar and a pint of water. When cool, stir in the juice of three oranges, a quart of claret, a tablespoonful of brandy and the whites of four eggs whipped to a stiff froth and freeze slowly. Sometimes there is used in this recipe the zest of lemon peel instead of oranges and then there is used some orange marmalade, heated and strained of course. Or any jelly which you may fancy goes in very harmoniously with this concoction.
A kirsch sherbet is a delicacy that doesn't put itself in the way of ordinary mortals every day in the week. That's why its welcome is a soulful one when it does appear. You have a pint of chablis and a pint of any preferred fruit syrup, which you freeze. Then at the last there is added to it half a pint of kirschenwasser.
By the way, before I forget it, you may treat watermelon with the frozen champagne exactly as prescribed hereinbefore for strawberries and champagne.