Melon sorbet
Green melon: soft, very juicy and sweet without cloying. One of the most delicate sorbets, and one of the shortest-lived.
The recipe flags something almost nobody thinks about: do not scrape near the rind. That pale band of melon is bitter, and in a sorbet this delicate you taste all of it.
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
- ·Melon split in two: half in the base, the other frozen and added at 25 °C. Do not scrape near the rind.
- ·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
Not a drop of added water: the melon itself is almost entirely water, which is why the flavour reads so pure. It comes out very fine and light, and the glucose is the only thing keeping all that water from turning to ice.
All about this melon sorbet
As with the watermelon, the fruit is the liquid: green melon pulp and not a drop of added water. The syrup is built with 38 DE glucose, dextrose, sucrose and inulin.
The serving temperature drops a little further than with watermelon, because melon brings more of its own sugars. The solids and the sweetness stay where they should.
The frozen half goes in at around 25 °C: it cools the mix and reaches the mixture without ever having seen heat, which is what preserves the melon's perfume — one of the most fragile aromas there is.
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.
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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