Ice cream & Sorbet recipes and tips

[Hub-UK2]

Since I got an ice cream machine for my birthday in November I have been experimenting away making sorbets and ice creams. You certainly can't buy the same in the shops. I would like to expand my repertoire so has anyone got any good tips or recipes.

If anyone supplies a recipe can I publish it on Hub-UK so that everyone can share it.

David

[Schielke]

For sorbets I have been using a 1:1 sugar to water ratio for simple syrup mixed with your fruit juice or other flavoring. After this I usually add a tablespoon or so of corn syrup for smoothness.

The proportion for syrup to juice (or other) depends on the desired sweetness and the amount of sugar in the juice (or other). A tip I learned from Charlie Trotters Gourmet Cooking for Dummies book is to take a raw egg, wash it, and then drop it in your mixture.

If the egg barely floats or not at all, you need more syrup.

If the egg floats very high in the mixture, you need more water.

If the egg sits with about 1/4 of it's surface showing you are right on.

A recent recipe that I enjoy is:

Satsuma Rum Sorbet with Shaved Dark Chocolate

1 c water

1 c sugar

1 T corn syrup

3/4 c juice from satsuma oranges (6-8 satsumas)

2 strips of zest from oranges

1 jigger of dark rum

2 T shaved dark chocolate

1. Bring sugar, water, corn syrup and orange zest to light boil over medium heat.

2. Remove orange zest strips from syrup.

3. Cool syrup in ice bath.

4. Stir orange juice into syrup mixture. Make sure it is well combined.

5. Freeze in your Ice Cream machine as per manufacturer's directions.

6. When mixture is starting to get thick, add the jigger of dark rum slowly and then the shaved chocolate.

7. Let combine in the machine.

8. Pour out into airtight container and freeze to desired firmness.

[Jon Tseng]

Was mucking around with sorbets over Christmas

An excellent recipe is the Chocolate Sorbet in Gordon Ramsay's Passion for Flavour. Milk, syrup, chocolate ie no cream :-)

Also did an interesting pea sorbet from the book from the bloke from Tru in Chicago; can send you the recipe if interested

I still have a sneaking suspicion there is something which could be done with rose water and lychees but never got round to perfecting it.

cheerio

J

[Jonathan Day]

The River Café Italian Kitchen cookbook has a chocolate sorbet made with syrup, cocoa and whatever alcohol you like to flavour the final mixture with. I have used Cointreau, kirschwasser, rum, as well as some homemade Slovakian firewater (made with plums, from the nose of it) brought over by one of our au pairs. It has all been good (though each has been very different).

The density of the syrup is important because it alters the freezing temperature of the product and hence your ability to continue churning the mixture before it freezes, and hence the size of the crystals in the final sorbet. Instead of dropping eggs into your syrup to test this, you can get a saccharometer, what the French call a pèse-sirop -- essentially a glass egg: hollow glass tube, closed at both ends, weighted, with a scale inside. With this, you can measure your syrup in degrees Baumé, and decide whether to make an 18-to-20 degree rich sorbet, which will have a texture almost like fine ice cream, or a less rich one, e.g. 14 degrees, which will have a grainier, more granita-like texture. The gadget costs no more than a few pounds (I think I paid £4) , though you may need to go to a professional supply house since home kitchenware stores, for some reason, don't tend to stock these. Note that the richer you make your syrup, the sweeter the mixture becomes, and the more you may need to compensate with lemon juice or other acid. You can get more texture with less sweetness by adding glucose syrup (available at bakers' supplies) to the sugar mixture. Also note that alcohols change the freezing properties of sorbet and ice cream solutions.

If you don't want to buy a saccharometer, Harold McGee (in The Curious Cook) has analysed all of this to a fare-thee-well. He gives a table, showing, for each type of fruit, the amount of sugar you need to add to get a sorbet of a given texture, and the amount of lemon juice needed to balance the sweetness. The amounts vary a lot, because different fruits contain different amounts of natural sugar.

I still think that the saccharometer (and tasting spoons) do the job faster and easier!

[cabrales]

I have wondered about how marrons glaces can be made into ice cream. I had a delicious marrons (chestnut -- not candied chestnut) ice cream at Jean Bardet recently. Gordon Ramsay has, as Jon suggested, some good ice creams as well. I particularly like his milk flavored ice cream. At Greuze, as lizziee and others mentioned, Marc de Burgogne is made into a sorbet.

I would imagine lavender syrup or rose syrup from Provence could be utilized in sorbet, as could absynthe (sp.), for that matter.

[Schielke]

The River Café Italian Kitchen cookbook has a chocolate sorbet made with syrup, cocoa and whatever alcohol you like to flavour the final mixture with.  I have used Cointreau, kirschwasser, rum, as well as some homemade Slovakian firewater (made with plums, from the nose of it) brought over by one of our au pairs. It has all been good (though each has been very different).

The density of the syrup is important because it alters the freezing temperature of the product and hence your ability to continue churning the mixture before it freezes, and hence the size of the crystals in the final sorbet.  Instead of dropping eggs into your syrup to test this, you can get a saccharometer, what the French call a pèse-sirop -- essentially a glass egg: hollow glass tube, closed at both ends, weighted, with a scale inside. With this, you can measure your syrup in degrees Baumé, and decide whether to make an 18-to-20 degree rich sorbet, which will have a texture almost like fine ice cream, or a less rich one, e.g. 14 degrees, which will have a grainier, more granita-like texture. The gadget costs no more than a few pounds (I think I paid £4) , though you may need to go to a professional supply house since home kitchenware stores, for some reason, don't tend to stock these. Note that the richer you make your syrup, the sweeter the mixture becomes, and the more you may need to compensate with lemon juice or other acid. You can get more texture with less sweetness by adding glucose syrup (available at bakers' supplies) to the sugar mixture. Also note that alcohols change the freezing properties of sorbet and ice cream solutions.

If you don't want to buy a saccharometer, Harold McGee (in The Curious Cook) has analysed all of this to a fare-thee-well. He gives a table, showing, for each type of fruit, the amount of sugar you need to add to get a sorbet of a given texture, and the amount of lemon juice needed to balance the sweetness. The amounts vary a lot, because different fruits contain different amounts of natural sugar.

I still think that the saccharometer (and tasting spoons) do the job faster and easier!

Last night I made a chocolate sorbet from "Desserts by Pierre Herme". It had 7 oz of dark chocolate, 1 cup sugar (scant), and 2 cups water. It turned out pretty nice. A rich chocolate flavor, but without the added roundness of cream. It is very delicioius, but you cannot eat much of it.

Thanks for the tip on the saccharometer, I may look into this for future sorbet endeavors. Right now, I will stick with my egg. His name is Sorby and he likes to float in sugar.

One other question: When making savory sorbets, is any sugar involved? How is the chemistry altered?

Thanks for the great info!

Ben

[Jonathan Day]

When making savory sorbets, is any sugar involved?  How is the chemistry altered?

Ben, my guess is that for most savoury sorbets professional pastry chefs increasingly use a "Paco Jet", a gadget that takes a block of solid-frozen stuff and blasts it into tiny crystals, i.e. sorbet. You can "pacotize" (that's the word they use) almost anything with one of these machines. Unfortunately they cost a small fortune, take up a lot of space, and make a lot of noise.

Your sorbet maker (and mine) probably won't do a great job with solutions that freeze at 0 degrees C; the spinning blade will simply stop as the solution freezes into solid ice. We need something to lower the freezing temperature of the solution. Sugar does this, and so do egg whites. And so does salt. Of course salt produces its own flavour problems. And you have to hope that your egg whites don't harbour salmonella.

I've done cucumber sorbets and tomato sorbets, using both salt and egg whites. I've also done rosemary and thyme sorbets, but these were more sweet -- I infused the herbs in the sugar solution.

Weirdest one I've made thus far was a mashed potato ice cream, served in a small quenelle in a salad of wild mushrooms. Tasted this, first time, at Chibois's place in Grasse.

[Schielke]

Interesting, thanks again for your insight.

I have been thinking about doing some experimentation with smoked flavors in cold dishes such as sorbets and this will help out a lot!

Ben

[nightscotsman]

Rick Tramonto has a whole chapter on savory sorbets in his book "Amuse Bouche" (the one that Jon Tseng mentioned above). He calls them savory, but they all have a substantial amount of sugar in them. For instance, the pea-mint sorbet has 1 3/4 cups of simple syrup and the garlic sorbet has 7 Tbs of simple syrup (along with the sugar introduced by the cooked garlic). I would think you would be more successful creating truely savory ice creams rather than sorbets, as you could adjust the amount and type of fat to control the fomation of ice crystals and smooth the texture. On the other hand, I've been thinking a tomato water sorbet might be very interesting...

[Steve Klc]

Instead of trolling away for tips and recipes for HubUK David--in turn to reprint on your website--why don't you just put a link on your site to the discussions here--your readers will find that alot more helpful than a recipe anyway, especially JD's thoughtful commentary. And you're welcome to share some of your own efforts with your new machine here as well.

JD--a Pacojet doesn't cost a small fortune for a pro--in fact, I bought two PacoJets for a restaurant for less than the price of the smallest commercial batch freezer--i.e. a Coldelite or a Taylor. It's very accessible and less expensive, actually, for a small restaurateur or caterer or affluent home enthusiast. Especially if you factor in its savory applications which the best chefs are using it for all the time. I also hear a home model of the PacoJet is now available in Europe with some plastic components and a smaller beaker size but for alot less money. Might be worth it for you Europeans to check it out, certainly if you'd like to make a good olive oil ice cream--it's much easier in a Paco. And re: sorbets--you might find it interesting to know that many pastry chefs use their Pacos for ice creams only and still make sorbets in a batch freezer. So, too, some ice cream flavors, like caramel just seem to work better in a batch freezer. You can't get the right flavor and texture in a Paco due to the sugar content.

Ben, yes, I also feel a really good chocolate sorbet--made with chocolate not cocoa powder exclusively-- can taste better and more immediate than a chocolate ice cream.

[Schielke]

Hmmm, I will have to do some research into that home pacojet...even though it probably costs more than I want to spend right now. I saw on the Pacojet Web site that they list for 2500 bucks a piece. I couldn't find any on Ebay, is there some cool underground used pacojet market that I dont know about? The process is kinda interesting...how much noise do they make?

One issue that I have been having with my sorbets is that the syrup tends to seperate towards the bottom of the container I store them in once mixed. There is a noticeable thin layer of syrup on the very bottom of the container once the mixture has firmed up. Do I have too much syrup or is it melting too much before it freezes?

Ben

[Steve Klc]

That price sounds about right for the pro model. Their CEO is trying to gain market share and keeps dropping the price, which as JD remarked did once cost a small fortune. But JD--it doesn't take up much space--it's like a small narrow milk shake machine. Batch freezers are much bigger--my espresso machine is almost as big and my (personal home) Italian ice cream maker from Williams Sonoma, not as stylishly and efficiently designed, is bulkier as well. Noise--noise is relative. Not as much as a small convention oven, more than an espresso machine. How much noise does your machine make now--and what kind of machine are you using? The compressor in my Italian machine cranks for a half an hour making a quart--the Paco spins a quart in minutes.

And there is another option for measurement which has not been mentioned--a refractometer for those truly serious about quantifying their degrees Brix or Baume in order to predict final texture and softness. 2 degrees is a very wide latitude and there is benefit in narrowing the range. Much more accurate than an egg or the glass vial bobbing up and down in a solution. Under 200 bucks for very good ones.

Speaking of machines--what are you all using? Ben? I have seen a self-contained cooling unit down around $200 as well--Euro Pro was the model I believe. It used to be you had to spend $500-600 for a decent home model.

And while JD covered the basics of what affects the freezing point--don't forget all sugar is not created equal--mixtures of different sugars with different properties affect the freezing point and resultant texture as well--glucose, dextrose, trimolene and inverted sugar, powdered (atomized) glucose, honey etc. That's why alot of pastry chefs like to say "simple syrup isn't so simple." That's also but one area where the McGee chapter didn't go far enough or explore.

[Suzanne F]

The simplest thing I make in my ice cream machine is Iced Almond Milk: 1 liter of Italian almond milk, 250 grams of sugar. Mix until the sugar is dissolved. Freeze.

I've gotten fancy with it, adding a splash of orange flower water, a few drops each of vanilla and almond extracts, a pinch of cinnamon, and a bit of grated lemon zest -- turns out really fantastic. But you know, just the almond milk + sugar version is quite nice, and everybody who tastes it goes nuts for it ( sorry).

[nightscotsman]

The home model Pacojet sounds very interesting. However, I thought I read that the manufacturer recommends freezing the canisters to really low temperatures - like -4°F. This might be very difficult to achieve in a standard home freezer. Does the home model compensate for this?

[Steve Klc]

No, I'd suspect not, that -4 thing is paramount--but while the freezer part of your fridge does not usually get down to that temperature, many home standalone freezers do.

A nice article on chefs using the Paco here:

http://www.pacojet.com/html/images/refer/artikel.jpg

In 3 years, the price has come down from $3,600+ to $2,495.

[Hub-UK2]

I was really pleased with the response to the question especially from JD. Those were things I wanted to know about but neglected to ask.

The post about about Jacque Chibois' recipe led me off in another direction entirely and I found the website of L'Ecole des Chefs - what a wondeful idea (I have emailed them to see if I can add them to the cooking holidays I market in my day job).

Steve Klc you said "Instead of trolling away for tips and recipes for HubUK David--in turn to reprint on your website--why don't you just put a link on your site to the discussions here". I put a link to egullet a long time ago as I always regarded it as a first class facility and if I re-constituted any of this information into an article I would certainly credit the information as coming from egullet as well as providing a link to the site. Whether I get time to do so is another matter. Hub-UK started out as my own personal web site and recipe book (I worked as a freelance web designer at the time) the idea being that it would encourage me to write down my own recipes instead of eventually forgetting them - somewhere along the line it turned into a reference and recipe work. Whatever it became it has given me a lot of fun and led to meeting all sorts of interesting people.

An interesting ice cream I made at the weekend was using crushed mint infused in milk - really good.

This was roughly the ingredients as I remember them.

5 or 6 sprigs of mint (5 or 6 leaves each)

3 ozs caster sugar

3 egg yolks

2 tsp natural vanilla essence (couldn't get any pods)

7fl ozs full cream milk

5fl ozs double cream

[FoodMan]

I still have a sneaking suspicion there is something which could be done with rose water and lychees but never got round to perfecting it.

Over the weekend I made an orange blossom ice cream using a mix of Alton Brown's Vanilla ice cream (sans Vanilla) recipe and flavorings from Claudia Roden's "Dairy Ice Cream with mastic and rose water" from her middle eastern cook book. The result was superb served with some chopped unsalted pistachios on top. Let me know if you want the recipe and I'll post it.

FM

edit to remove some of the quotes.

Edited January 7, 2003 by FoodMan (log)

[Jonathan Day]

Steve, I have wanted a Pacojet at home for some time. Unfortunately I discovered it after spending something like £400 on a Musso "Lussino" sorbetière. It works beautifully, but you do have to deal with syrups and stabilisers. I should have added that, apart from salmonella worries, egg whites do affect the taste of a final product.

I haven't seen a Pacojet for less than £2000/€2500, which feels a bit too much to spend just now. Where did you see the less expensive model? And which home freezers get cold enough to freeze the solutions solid in the Pacojet beakers? Wouldn't you need to install a professional (4 star) freezer?

[Steve Klc]

JD--I don't know anyone--any pro anyway--who advocates the egg white anymore. Though you can buy frozen, even fresh, pasteurized egg whites now I still wouldn't recommend it. It's just a quick fix, a throwaway not based in good science or knowing what you are doing.

With the Musso--a very good machine for ice cream and sorbet at home--you do have to go 1) alternative sugars in the mix, like glucose and inverted sugar or trimolene and possibly 2) stabilizers. Not necessarily. If you adjust the sugar/% water mix and spin when you need a batch--i.e. not try to hold or store it in the freezer overnight or for longer than an hour or two--you should be fine without stabilizers.

But don't be scared off by stabilizers. It's just natural stuff like carob bean flour, carragenan, sometimes with dextrose and 0% powdered milk mixed in. Gelglace is one I have used from Patisfrance--which contains pectin and carob flour. There are usually helpful little guides like "add 5 to 10 g Gelglace for 100 g sugar" that aren't actually that helpful until you start to experiment. There's usually a trick to utilizing stabilizers--mixing them into some sugar first and then whisking them into liquid, applying some heat, say up to 185 F and allowing it to ripen before churning. But the best stuff I've worked work by--by far--is Sevarome from Yssingeaux, France. Lots of different formulations--some for sorbet like 64S--usage 2 to 4 g per kg of base, some for ice cream like 64G--4 to 6 g per kg and 65S--2 to 2.5 g per kg, they sell dextrose as well with guidance like "6% max of sugar in ice cream"--which means take the total weight of your sugar content in the recipe and substitute 6% of it for dextrose. Some people use more than 6%. Dextrose speeds up melting in the mouth, and reduces freezing time, among other things. But with all these things it is possible to use too much.

Look in books like the Adria and also the Oriol Balaguer--now translated into English--for his ice cream and sorbet recipes, they have good "stock" simple syrups so you can see the percentage of glucose to sugar he uses in recipes--roughly 30% to the weight of sugar, and also the grams of stabilizer or amounts of tricky powdered sugars they use. I've tried many of the recipes in batch freezers and they are good--even without stabilizer--as long as you don't try to hold them long. The Balaguer has the best discussion of different sugar types and their properties that I've seen in a pastry text as well.

And I have not actually seen the "home" PacoJet--I'm just relaying what I've heard--that one is--or will shortly be-- available in Europe.

[Jonathan Day]

Steve, I've used the Sevarome flavours but not their stabilisers. You've opened up a new area for experimenting. Thanks.

[CheGuevara]

Steve, I have wanted a Pacojet at home for some time. Unfortunately I discovered it after spending something like £400 on a Musso "Lussino" sorbetière. It works beautifully, but you do have to deal with syrups and stabilisers.

I feel exactly the same way as you did/do - having just found out about the Paco minutes ago.

I used to have the simple Krups/Glaciere makers, which work with a removable bowl which needs pre-freezing....now i have a magimix which still hasn't convinced me of the value.

[bripastryguy]

Steve,

when you say not to hold them too long, what time period are you thinking?

When I was at BR GUEST we had to do between 30-60 gal at a time, we used Cremodan 61 and the sorbet stabilizer from Paris Gourmet as well. They seemed to hold well for about 3 days. I think since then Morand has tweaked the recipe.

I'll find out what they are using now. I myself have never worked with the Pacojet, but I have tasted the results- Awesome, when done right.

[Steve Klc]

Bri--I use "not hold them too long" only in the context of stuff done without stabilizers--so mixtures without the Cremodan or the Gelglace. Something someone might do at home. A basic batch of creme anglaise ice cream, say. Spin an hour or two before dinner, put it in the freezer, and you should be ok by the time dessert rolls around. Any longer and you could get crystals or lose texture.

If you nail the right Baume/Brix and have the right percentage of glucose or inverted sugar in your mix--then perhaps you can spin once during the day and "hold" throughout the evening. Even at home. This is because these other "sugars" help retard crystallization and retain softness even frozen. (This is also what is meant by lowering the freezing point. )But overnight, by the next morning, you'll taste degradation--and that is why the old French way to deal with this was simply to melt the frozen ice creams and sorbets down--and then re-churn them the morning of the next day--for that next day's service.

Stabilizers allow you to "hold" these ice creams and sorbets even longer--for days--and is why they are often used in foodservice.

[Hub-UK2]

I almost feel that there are two threads going here. One about basic sorbet and ice cream making by the home user (me) and then those aspiring to professional making of sorbets and ice creams. I don't have a problem with this but I feel that my efforts (which I was quite proud of) are now a bit tame.

When I make a sorbet I use an egg white with whatever juice and syrup I am using. I didn't know why excpet that the recipe book said to do so. My wife and I enjoyed the resulting sorbets. I then thought (as I had a book of Michel Roux's with several recipes for sorbet) that I would make a sorbet without an egg - it came out like frozen ice so I went back to using an egg white. Salmonella doesn't particularly bother me as I use my eggs fresh and if I have any doubt I don't use them but I would like to create my sorbets without eggs.

Can anyone guide me on this - in simple terms for home preparation.

[Steve Klc]

We multi-task around here--and this thread can function on another level as well--not just home user, not just pro but "pro-leaning" amateur as well--smart, capable people who'd like to do a better job at home than the many mundane media sources would have them believe they are capable of.

And everybody has to start somewhere David--my first attempt at a sorbet was in one of those cheap Krups glaciere type machines with a removable core 10 years ago and I didn't use any stabilizers and didn't even know what glucose was. I made a simple syrup and I added a bit of egg white to improve the texture of the sorbet just as the books at the time told me to. (The egg white does not in and of itself prevent freezing to "ice"--it just helps--if you get ice the sugar is really off, i.e. not enough.) I finally settled on"Frozen Desserts" by Caroline Liddell & Robin Weir as the best of the beginning bunch. Charming little book, erudite even, by two UK cooks perfect for a home user. Get it, use it. You're at this level right now. You may or may not outgrow it.

You might want to consider getting a saccharometer (cheap) as JD mentioned or playing around with the immersed/ floating egg (cheaper) as Ben mentioned as imprecise ways to measure sugar content in your mixes--and use those guides to help you predict how soft or firm your sorbets will be. Try to watch that Alton Brown ice cream episode on the Food Network or at least read that thread on eGullet--he uses jam/pectin instead of a raw egg white and that would be better.

I outgrew this Liddell/Weir book and this methodology, though there are some gems in there that I still use--recipes that "work" not that the authors can convey scientifically why they work or teach you what you need to know in order to develop or create or repeat this success on your own. But even at this level there is some discussion of the role alcohol plays in a frozen mixture and I applaud them for including metric measurements so you can weight everything--much more quantifiable.

Second stage--if you choose to get this far, if you care--and by no means do you have to care this much--but just don't complain when you're not getting the results you want if you stop short. This is for the pro and pro-leaning amateur--begin by reading the seminal chapter on fruit ices in Hal McGee's "Curious Cook." This will help you improve the texture of your sorbets tremendously but it is mathematical/scientific and it is beyond many home cooks. Fact of life. However, even Hal admitted toward the end of that chapter that he didn't really get into the even more key elements of sorbet-making--as I have mentioned--stabilizers and different sugars.

I personally believe these are within the grasp of serious home cooks and if the food scientists and molecular gastronomist-wannabees of this country--the McGees and Corrihers--worked with the best pastry chefs of this country a la in France as w/ Herve This and Pierre Gagnaire or Philippe Conticini or in the UK with Peter Barham and Heston Blumenthal--we'd all be alot better off, a lot further down the road to clearing up this frustration over producing frozen desserts at home and in restaurants.

Begin to read what you can on the differences between all the types of sugars the food industry uses--and why they use them: glucose, inverted sugar, dextrose, powdered glucose, 0% powdered milk and yes, stabilizers. Try to understand why crystals form in ice cream and sorbet and how to combat them. This is the road to true ice cream and sorbet enlightenment.

But no one will look down on you if decide not to follow through this far.