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Cranberry Sherbet
1 pint cranberries 3/4 cup water 1 1/3 cups cold water 1 scant cup sugar 1 egg white 1 teaspoon vanilla, if desired Boil the cranberries in the three-fourths cup of water, and rub them through a fine strainer. Add to them the one and one-third cups of cold water. Boil the sugar in one-third cup of water till it threads, and beat this sirup into the stiffly beaten egg white, then fold this into the cranberry mixture. Add the vanilla, and freeze.
This is nice served with a raisin sauce, in which case the vanilla should be put into the sauce instead of into the sherbet.
An old-style water ice lightened with Italian meringue, which is what keeps it from freezing into a solid block. The hot-syrup step is the hinge: the sugar must reach thread stage and go into the whites while still hot, in a thin stream.
- Thread stage"Till it threads" means 230-234F on a thermometer, when a spoonful drawn up falls in a fine thread. Below that the meringue stays slack; much above it the syrup begins to set as it hits the whites.
- The syrup waterThe sugar is boiled in one-third cup of water, which the ingredient list does not mention and which is additional to the water given for the berries. That makes roughly 2 1/2 cups of water in total for the whole sherbet.
- A scant cupSlightly under a level cup, about 6 1/2 oz or 185 g. Cranberries are sour enough that trimming the sugar further will give a hard, icy result rather than a merely tart one.
- Egg whiteThe hot syrup warms the white but does not reliably bring it to a safe temperature, and nothing here is cooked afterwards. Use pasteurized egg white, or aquafaba, if the sherbet is for children, the elderly or anyone pregnant.
- StrainingA fine strainer, not a food mill: the point is to leave the skins and seeds behind and keep only the pulp and juice. A nylon sieve and the back of a ladle work better than a chinois for something this thick.
- FreezingWritten for a hand-cranked freezer packed with ice and salt. In an ice cream machine, chill the mixture thoroughly first and churn 20-25 minutes; still-frozen in a shallow pan, beat it hard every 30 minutes until set, or the meringue separates and floats.
- VanillaOne teaspoon in a quart of cranberry ice is a background note, not a flavour. The original is right that it belongs in the raisin sauce if you serve one.
- YieldA generous quart, serving six as a course on its own or eight alongside a richer dessert. It softens fast, so serve in chilled glasses.