Cherry sorbet
Strained cherry pulp, without a scrap of skin: dark colour, concentrated flavour and just the right acidity.
The recipe calls for strained pulp, not cherries. Between stones, stems and skin a fair amount is lost, so you have to start from considerably more fruit than the pulp weight.
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
- ·The strained pulp, cold, onto the syrup already 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
Fine and clean, with no skin or fibre, the cherry's acidity out in front. Nearly half the weight is fruit, so the flavour needs no help: the sugars are only there to keep ice crystals from forming.
All about this cherry sorbet
Almost half the sorbet is fruit: strained pulp. The syrup is built separately with 38 DE glucose, dextrose, sucrose and inulin — fibre, which gives body without sweetening — and the whole reaches its solids with no fat at all.
The sweetness is among the highest we use. It is not a whim: cherry is sharp, and when cold, acid masks sweetness. The serving temperature sits a little below mid-band, because the fruit already supplies its own antifreeze sugars.
The pulp goes in with the syrup already at 4 °C and is blended in. Cooked, it would lose its vivid colour and fresh aroma, which is exactly what you want in a cherry sorbet.
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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