Banana sorbet
Raw banana with the syrup already cold, alongside freshly squeezed lemon juice. Cooked it would taste of compote; raw it tastes of banana.
The lemon is not there for flavour: it is an antioxidant. Banana browns the moment it is cut because one of its enzymes reacts with air, and lemon acid slows that down.
Ingredients
For 1 kgTick each ingredient as you get it ready.
Need to adjust the formula?
Step by step
9 steps · follow the order for the best result
Chef's notes
- ·Banana and lemon juice, with the syrup already cold, at 4 °C.
- ·Do not skip the cold ageing: it hydrates proteins and stabiliser and clearly improves the texture.
- ·The serving temperature depends on your recipe: if you formulate to a softer PAC than your freezer (say -11 °C with the chest at -18 °C), temper it for 5–10 min before serving; if the PAC matches your freezer, it can be eaten straight out.
- ·Why formulate at -11 and not at -18 °C: even though your freezer sits at -18 °C, formulating at -11 makes the ice cream tastes better — at -18 it is so cold that the taste buds barely pick up the flavour and the fat is slow to melt in the mouth. And keeps better: ice cream formulated at -11 and kept at -18 has less free water, suffers less from Ostwald ripening (ice crystals joining and growing) and keeps its creaminess longer.
- ·Keep your own notes: write down the POD and PAC that work best with your machine.
The texture
spot on
Thick and creamy with no milk at all: banana has enough starch to give that body on its own. It carries very little sucrose because ripe fruit is already sweet enough.
All about this banana sorbet
Banana is an unusual fruit for a sorbet: it has little water and a lot of starch, so it gives body all by itself. With this much fruit the sorbet reaches its solids and comes out far richer than you would expect from something with zero fat.
The sugars are led by the 38 DE glucose, backed by dextrose and very little sucrose. Banana is sweet in its own right, so the sucrose is almost decorative and the whole still reaches its sweetness, with the serving temperature where it should be.
The timing is clear: with the mix already at 4 °C. Cooked banana changes flavour completely — it becomes compote — and darkens into the bargain. Added cold and with the lemon, the sorbet keeps its pale colour and the aroma of the raw fruit.
The ingredients and what each does
The fruit brings the flavour, the colour and much of the water in the mix. Sucrose and dextrose set the sweetness and the hardness at serving temperature. Glucose adds body and barely sweetens. Inulin adds solids with almost no sweetness, the job milk would do in an ice cream. The stabiliser holds the free water and stops crystals forming in the freezer. Water adjusts the concentration so the flavour is neither watery nor pasty.
Technique and controlling the numbers
Adjusting the POD (sweetening power) and the PAC (antifreezing power, given as a target temperature) lets you match sweetness and hardness to your taste and your machine. With the selectors in the side bar the formula recalculates itself and you will see how the amount of each ingredient changes.
Storage and common mistakes
Store at -18 °C in an airtight container and avoid freeze-thaw cycles. The commonest faults are not ageing it enough, too much sugar so it never freezes properly, and over-churning, which whips in too much air and wrecks the texture.
Recommended for this recipe
Equipment and ingredients that make the difference.
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