No. 3523

Californian Sherbet

Sorbet Californienne

In a vessel place four gills of syrup at thirty-five degrees, one gill of brandy, one gill of maraschino, half a bottleful of California champagne, the peel of one and the juice of three oranges, four gills of pineapple juice and the juice of twelve lemons. Reduce until it registers sixteen degrees with the saccharometer; strain through a fine wire sieve and freeze. Imbed in ice some molds as shown in Fig. 657; decorate with sprigs of fresh mint and fill with plain, colorless water; when the ice is sufficiently frozen unmold and keep them on ice until required for serving the sherbet, filling and serving them without any delay.

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For the Modern Kitchen

Ranhofer writes for a kitchen with a saccharometer, a hand-cranked freezer and an ice room. The measurements translate cleanly, but two of his instructions mean the opposite of what a modern cook assumes.

"Reduce" means dilute, not boil"Reduce" appears to mean lowering the hydrometer reading rather than boiling: the figure is brought down to sixteen degrees by adding water. Boiling would only concentrate the mixture and would drive off the brandy, maraschino and champagne that give it its character.
Degrees on the saccharometerThese are degrees Baume. Syrup at 35 degrees is a heavy syrup, roughly 65 percent sugar by weight, close to saturation. Sixteen degrees Baume is about 28 to 30 Brix, which is the standard density band for a churned water ice; on a modern refractometer aim for that range.
Alcohol skews the readingSpirits are lighter than water, so a hydrometer floated in this mixture sits lower and understates the actual sugar.
Gills and the half bottleA gill is half a cup. So: 2 cups syrup, 1/2 cup brandy, 1/2 cup maraschino, 2 cups pineapple juice, plus half a 750 ml bottle of sparkling wine, about 1 1/2 cups. Twelve lemons give roughly 2 cups of juice and three oranges about 1 cup.
California champagneIn 1894 this meant sparkling wine from the young California industry, much of it bottle-fermented in the French manner, though sweetness varied a good deal from producer to producer. A dry sparkling wine suits the recipe; sweet or off-dry versions push the sugar past the intended density.
Why it will not freeze hardA cup of spirits plus a bottle-half of wine in a batch of this size depresses the freezing point considerably. This is meant to be a soft, spoonable sorbet served immediately, not a scoopable block. Churning, whether in Ranhofer's hand freezer or a modern machine, is what makes it; left still in a pan without repeated stirring, the syrup and alcohol tend to settle out.
The ice moldsFig. 657 shows hollow ice cups: water is frozen in a mold packed in ice, with mint set against the walls so it is suspended in the clear ice. Silicone dome or cup molds in a freezer do the same job. Freeze in two stages, positioning the mint after the outer shell has set, and unmold onto a chilled plate.
Yield and serviceThe ingredients as listed come to something over two quarts before any water is added, so reckon on sixteen or more small servings. Sorbet of this kind was a mid-meal course, so portions are three or four ounces, filled into the ice cups at the last second before they weep.

A Little History

The Epicurean (1894) is Charles Ranhofer's record of some three decades running the kitchen at Delmonico's in New York, and its enormous sorbet chapter reflects a specific piece of dining ritual: the iced course served partway through a long menu, before the roast or game, meant to reset the palate. Nearly every one of these sherbets is named for a place, a person or a patron, and this one advertises the sudden respectability of California wine. Sparkling wine had been made in the state since the 1850s and by the 1880s Californian producers were shipping bottled "champagne" east in quantity, at a moment when French vineyards were still recovering from phylloxera. Pairing it with orange and pineapple juice was a way of making the whole glass read as Californian and tropical at once, and the trick of serving it in a clear ice cup with mint frozen into the wall belongs to the same era of ice-room showmanship that produced Delmonico's carved ice centerpieces.