No-machine sorbets? A summer breeze
A recipe for Yellow Plum Sorbet
I wish I owned an ice cream maker, though my scales are probably happy I don’t. I cannot pass a Gelateria, now almost as populous on London streets as coffee shops, without going in. I’m not even that fond of the stuff. But it is so celebratory, and the flavours now offered so tempting to the curious tongue. Who could resist a taste of dark chocolate sorbet - just to establish whether it could possibly be as rewarding as a cream-based chocolate ice cream? It is, and better. Anything remotely praline must be scooped, and even if you hate that claggy institution-menu milk-plus-grains dessert with a lid of scorched skin, could you really walk past Rice Pudding & Strawberry Jam ice cream and not ask for a sample? You must surely want to know more.
Not all flavours are a success. I remember a rather unpleasant olive oil ice cream in Sicily followed the next day by a worse wine ice cream.
We tend to assume it’s the Italians who first devised frozen desserts, Marco Polo having returned from China to Venice in 1295 with a sorbet-style recipe.
Marco Polo was extraordinary not so much for his extensive travels around the Far East, which many of his contemporaries also pursued, as for the 13th-century travelogue written down by Rustichello da Pisa from stories told to him by Marco Polo, the earliest version of which was titled Le Devisement dou Monde. It gave the west - and in particular its trading fraternity - enormously detailed information about the geography, flora, fauna, religions, art, culture, and food of countries from Japan to Russia, the Middle East, the Mongol empire and the islands of what is now Indonesia.
But the Persians had beaten the Italians to the invention of ice desserts many centuries earlier, around 500 BC, pouring grape juice concentrate over snow. They devised an impressively complex recipe for their royal families involving iced rose water, vermicelli, saffron, and fruits not unlike the ice kachang of South East Asia today.
By 300 BC, the Chinese had discovered how to store blocks of ice underground to cool food and drink during the hot summers; but a prototype Chinese ice cream - a milk and rice mixture frozen by packing it into snow - is only recorded in 200 BC. A 1st century AD Roman cookbook includes recipes for sweet puddings sprinkled with snow, while 2nd century Persian recipes exist for sweet drinks chilled with ice.
By the Tang dynasty in the 8th century AD, iced tea mixed with flakes of camphor and frozen in an ice box was being created for a member of the emperor’s family at the great palace at Changan.
Kakigōri, a Japanese shaved ice dessert popular today, dates back to the Heian period, from 794 to 1185, and is recorded in the 11th century The Pillow Book of Sei Shonagon as “chips of ice mixed with fruit juice and served in a new silver bowl.”
Ice made its way slowly west along the Silk Road, first arriving in the Middle East where shariba, a chilled Arab drink gave us the words ‘sherbet’ and ‘sorbet’, then on to Renaissance Italy. But it wasn’t till 1565 that Bernardo Buontalenti, a specialist in ice conservation, created an orange-and-bergamot flavoured sorbet from ice, salt, lemon, wine, milk, sugar, egg, and honey. I want one. The invention of gelato alla crema is credited to him, although his contemporary Cosimo Ruggeri, the astrologer and more, is also up for that accolade.
The first ice house in Britain was built by James I in 1619, with the first ice cream eaten in England known to have been licked at Windsor Castle in 1667. After that, everyone with enough wealth had to acquire an ice house. So on it went, until the Americans invented the refrigerator at the start of the 20th century.
If ice creams and sorbets and granitas were made so long ago without the need of modern equipment, I can’t really justify owning a machine. But while there are No Churn recipes for ice cream all across the internet, there is little explanation for how to make sorbets by hand.
Based as they mostly are on an egg white foundation, sorbets fall into the same category as meringues and souffles - delights to be cooked by someone with a good deal more skill than you believe you have. Yet, like those, they’re a doddle. It’s only the egg whites that make them each seem deceptively challenging.
This method works with most soft fruits and berries, and especially well with raspberries and blackcurrants. Here, it makes a Yellow Plum Sorbet so airy it was challenging to photograph it before it melted.
450g/1 lb yellow Mirabelle or other plums, halved, stoned
285g/1 ¼ cup sugar
150ml/5 fl oz water
1 tablespoon lemon juice
2 egg whites
Stew the fruit with the sugar and water over medium until it has softened, 20-25 minutes. Cool then puree in a blender or processor. Add the lemon juice. Pour into a container and freeze until the puree is firm but not rock solid, 3-4 hours, every so often digging down the frozen edges and spooning them into the middle.
Beat the egg whites in a large bowl with an electric whisk until stiff. Now, whisking at a medium-low speed, add the frozen fruit puree, one spoonful at a time, to the egg foam, never letting up on the beating, until it turns into a snow of fruit sorbet. Refreeze, lidded, until you want to serve it.