Creamy mango sorbet
Mango with a touch of dairy: rounder than a sorbet and lighter than an ice cream. The middle ground for mango.
The semi-sorbet is a category of its own, not a watered-down ice cream. With a touch of fat it gains richness over a sorbet without losing the fruit flavour, which is the first thing a heavy dairy load covers.
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 mango, cold: with the mix already at 4 °C, before ageing.
- ·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
Silky, because mango pulp is thick on its own and the cream merely accompanies it. It comes out richer than a sharp-fruit sorbet and the mango arrives sweet and very ripe, with nothing covering it.
All about this mango semi-sorbet
The difference from the sorbet fits in two lines: a little cream and milk powder. With that the fat rises a notch and protein and lactose appear, rounding off the texture. The solids stay the same.
The sugar rises slightly against the sorbet — more sucrose and dextrose, no 38 DE glucose — because the dairy asks for a touch more sweetness so as not to fall flat. The result is a higher sweetness and a slightly softer ice cream.
The mango still goes in with the mix already at 4 °C: that is what preserves the raw-fruit aroma, which matters even more here, since the dairy already softens things.
The ingredients and what each does
The fruit brings the flavour. A little cream and milk powder rounds out the texture without turning it into ice cream: fat stays under two per cent. Sucrose and dextrose set the sweetness and the hardness at serving temperature. 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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