No. 3529

Venetian Sherbet

Sorbet a la Venitienne

Place in a vessel one pound of grated pineapple with a quart of twenty-degree boiling hot syrup, also half a vanilla stick. Two hours later strain forcibly through a sieve and add one gill of kirsch, one gill of brandy and a quarter of a bottleful of champagne. Serve in small gondolas (Fig. 663), made of gum paste (No. 3624).

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For the Modern Kitchen

Ranhofer's sorbets were built on a sugar syrup measured with a saccharometer and frozen in a hand-cranked pail, and the alcohol here is the thing that will decide whether the dish works. Read the freezing note first.

Twenty-degree syrupThe degrees are Baume, read on a syrup hydrometer, not temperature. Twenty degrees is a light syrup of roughly 35 percent sugar by weight — about 1 lb sugar dissolved in 1 quart of water, boiled and used hot as directed.
A gillHalf a cup, 4 fl oz. So half a cup of kirsch plus half a cup of brandy. A quarter of a bottle of champagne is about 6 fl oz.
The alcohol is the hingeA cup of spirits plus wine in roughly a quart and a half of base will not freeze firm in a domestic freezer. That is intentional in a sorbet of this period — it was churned to a soft, spoonable slush and served at once. If you want it to hold its shape at all, cut the kirsch and brandy by half and expect a soft set even then.
PineappleOne pound grated is roughly one small-to-medium fresh pineapple, peeled and cored, pulsed coarse or grated on a box grater. The boiling syrup should largely deactivate the bromelain, which matters if you later serve it near gelatin. Well-drained canned crushed pineapple works and is sweeter, so slacken the syrup slightly.
Half a vanilla stickHalf a vanilla bean, split lengthwise so the seeds infuse during the two-hour steep. Fish it out before straining, or scrape the seeds in and leave the pod behind.
Strain forciblyPress the pulp hard through a fine sieve or chinois with a ladle to extract juice and fine fibre while leaving the coarse strings behind. Ranhofer wanted body, not shreds. Chill the strained base thoroughly before churning; the spirits and champagne go in cold, at the end.
FreezingChurn in an ice cream machine until it is the texture of wet snow, then serve straight from the machine. Held in a freezer it will separate and go icy; a few hours is the outside limit.
The gondolasNo. 3624 is a gum paste — a sugar-and-gum-tragacanth modelling paste, rolled and dried in moulds — used as a decorative vessel rather than as something anyone was meant to eat. Chilled coupe glasses or hollowed pineapple shells serve the same purpose.
YieldAbout 1.5 quarts, which in the small portions this course expected is twelve to sixteen servings.

A Little History

The Epicurean (1894) is Charles Ranhofer's record of some thirty years as chef at Delmonico's in New York, and its sorbet chapter belongs to a specific slot in the long formal menu: the punch or sorbet course, a small iced glass of something sharp and alcoholic served after the entrees and before the roast or game to reset the palate. That is why the spirits here are so generous relative to the fruit — the ice was meant to arrive barely frozen and to taste distinctly of kirsch and brandy rather than of dessert. The Venetian name most likely comes from the presentation rather than any Italian origin: the gondola of gum paste was table sculpture of the kind Ranhofer illustrated throughout the book, and pineapple, still a costly imported fruit in the 1890s, did the work of signalling luxury. The syrup measured in degrees Baume reflects professional practice of the period, when a saccharometer was standard equipment in a hotel pastry department and recipes could assume one.