Home › Ices, Ice Creams, Etc › Italian Sorbet
Italian Sorbet
1½ cups grape fruit juice 1/2 cup lemon juice 1/4 cup wine Prepare and freeze same as Pineapple Frappé.
A two-line recipe that depends entirely on the one it points to: as written it is three liquids with no sugar and no method. Read it as a flavour variation on the frappé formula rather than a standalone recipe.
- The missing element is sugar syrupFarmer's water ices and frappés are built on a boiled sugar-and-water syrup, cooled, with the fruit juice stirred in afterward. Without it this mixture freezes into a hard, sour block, because sugar is what keeps a water ice scrapable. Take the syrup proportions from the Pineapple Frappé recipe this one points to, adjusting for the tartness of the grapefruit.
- "Frappé" means texture, not flavourA frappé is a water ice deliberately frozen only to a coarse mush rather than a smooth ice. In a modern kitchen the same effect comes from freezing in a shallow metal pan and raking it with a fork every 20 to 30 minutes until it is loose crystals, about three hours.
- Grape fruitTwo words was the ordinary printed form at this date. Modern grapefruit, particularly pink and red varieties, is generally sweeter and less bitter than the white-fleshed fruit of 1900, so taste the syrup before committing and hold back sugar accordingly.
- "1/4 cup wine" is unspecifiedThe original names no variety. In this section of the book sherry, Madeira or a white wine would all be plausible; sherry or a dry white are the safest reading. The alcohol also softens the freeze slightly, so do not increase it or the ice will not set.
- Juice by volume, not by fruit1½ cups of grapefruit juice is roughly two to three large fruit; the ½ cup of lemon juice is three to four lemons. Strain both, since pulp and membrane turn stringy when frozen.
- An ice-cream machine works, with a caveatA modern churn will produce something smoother than a frappé. If you want the intended texture, stop the machine while the mixture is still slushy and finish it in the freezer, stirring once or twice.
- Yield and serviceOnce the syrup is added the mixture comes to something over a quart, serving six to eight in small glasses. This is a between-courses or palate-cleansing ice in period menus, not a dessert portion, and it slumps quickly once out of the freezer.
"Sorbet" and "sorbetto" descend through Italian and French from Arabic sharbat, a sweetened iced drink, and by the late nineteenth century the word had come to mean a water ice served in small glasses partway through a formal dinner, before the roast course. Calling it "Italian" nods to the long-standing reputation of Italian confectioners as Europe's ice-makers. Florida groves were shipping grapefruit north in commercial quantity from the 1880s, and its appearance here, spelled as two words and paired with lemon, marks it as a fashionable ingredient rather than a staple. The freezing itself would have been done in a hand-cranked churn packed with cracked ice and rock salt, and the book explains texture by cross-reference to another recipe instead of by temperature.