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Fruit Ices and Sherbets
Make a syrup in general proportion of one quart of water to a pound of sugar with a pinch of salt and boil five minutes. The sweetness or tartness of the fruit used necessitates varying the amount of sugar. When cold add to the syrup a pint of fruit juice, also pulp if wished. Sherbets or "sorbets" are made by adding to the ice made as above, when partially frozen, the whipped white of an egg (or two if liked) for the above quantity, or with a little sugar added.
Granites are coarse-grained ices packed in the can and set away without stirring till the expiration of an hour when the sides are scraped fresh and the mixture re-packed. This is twice repeated. It is not until the ice is scraped and stirred that the fruit is added, lightly mixed in.
This is a base formula rather than a single dish: one sugar syrup that becomes a water ice, a sherbet, or a granita depending on how it is churned. The proportions are sound, but the equipment assumed is a hand-cranked freezer packed in ice and rock salt.
- The syrup ratio is the hingeOne quart water to one pound sugar is roughly 4 cups water to 2 cups sugar, about a 2:1 ratio by volume. Sugar depresses the freezing point and keeps the ice scoopable; cut it much below this and you get a solid block, push it much above and it will not set firmly.
- Adjusting for the fruitThe instruction to vary sugar by the fruit's sweetness is the real skill here. Taste the combined syrup and juice before freezing and aim for a mixture noticeably sweeter than you want the finished ice, since cold blunts sweetness by a wide margin.
- MeasuresA pint of fruit juice is 2 cups.
- Boil five minutes, then cool completelyThe brief boil dissolves the sugar and drives off a little water. The original directs that the juice go in only when the syrup is cold; adding fresh juice to hot syrup can dull its flavour and darken delicate juices.
- "The can" and packingThis assumes the metal canister of an ice-and-salt freezer. In an electric churn, run the ice base as you would a sorbet; without a machine, the scrape-and-repack method described here can be done in a shallow dish in the freezer.
- Granita timingThe original scrapes at hourly intervals, twice repeated, so three scrapings in all. Modern practice tends to shorter intervals, about every 30 to 45 minutes; longer intervals give larger, harder crystals.
- The raw egg whiteThe whipped white folded into a partly frozen ice is never cooked. Use pasteurized egg whites, or substitute an Italian meringue made with hot syrup, if serving anyone elderly, pregnant, very young or immunocompromised.
- Pulp and strainingBerry and stone-fruit pulp adds body but also seeds and fibre that freeze into grit. Pass the juice through a fine sieve if you want a clean texture, and add any reserved pulp late, as the granite instruction says, so it stays distinct.
The three preparations described here can be thought of as a graded family rather than separate dishes: a plain water ice, the same ice lightened with beaten white into a sherbet, and the unchurned, deliberately coarse granite (Italian granita, generally traced to grana, grain). The word sherbet is usually traced through Turkish şerbet and Persian sharbat from an Arabic root for a sweetened fruit drink, and is said to have reached English in the seventeenth century meaning a beverage long before it meant anything frozen; the French and Italian sorbet/sorbetto are generally held to be the same word by another road. Fruit ices were a staple of American fruit and dessert manuals of this period partly because they used up a glut of summer juice and partly because the hand-cranked freezer, packed with ice and coarse salt, had become ordinary household equipment.