Ices and sherbets are frozen desserts made from fruit purées or juices. They should be the essence of fruit, with intense, clear flavor. An ice, sometimes called a water ice or granita, has a pleasantly grainy texture, while a sherbet or sorbet is frozen in an ice-cream maker, giving it a velvety smooth texture. Fruit and sugar are the basic ingredients in sherbets and ices. They can be enhanced with a touch of vanilla extract or liqueur and a tiny pinch of salt. The fruit needs to be ripe and full of flavor. Taste it critically; bland fruit will make bland sorbet or ice. As long as it can be turned into a juice or purée, any fruit can be frozen into an ice or sherbet. Tender fruit can be puréed while raw in a food mill or food processor and then strained to remove seeds. I usually heat berries with a bit of sugar just until they start to release their juices before puréeing them. Harder fruits, such as pears and quinces, need to be cooked until soft before they can be puréed. You don’t have to strain citrus juice: remove the seeds by hand, and leave the pulp in for more texture and flavor. Sugar not only adds sweetness, it lowers the freezing temperature of the mix, which inhibits the formation of ice crystals. This is particularly important for achieving the velvety texture of a sherbet. Chilling and freezing mutes, or dulls, sweetness. For proper flavor when frozen, add sugar until the mix tastes overly sweet at room temperature. (For a very revealing experiment, take 3 separate tablespoons of purée or juice and add different amounts of sugar to each one. Freeze them, and taste each one for both sweetness and texture.) An ice is literally fruit juice or purée that has been frozen. The puréed fruit or juice is generally sweetened and then poured into a shallow glass or stainless-steel dish and put to freeze. When adding sugar, go slowly and test a small spoonful of the mix to see if more sugar is needed before adding more to the whole batch. You can also freeze a sample of the mix before freezing the whole lot to verify how it will taste when frozen. Once the mixture is in the freezer, stir it now and then to break up the ice crystals and to keep it from separating. The more often the ice is stirred while it is freezing, the finer the crystals will be in the end. I like to stir an ice once after the top and sides have started to freeze, and then again when it is slushy but not solid. When the ice is solid but still soft when poked, take it from the freezer and chop it. Scrape across the top down to the bottom with a fork, or use a pastry scraper and chop up and down and across the pan until the ice is completely broken up and fluffy. Let the ice re-chill before serving. Give it a light fluff and scoop it with a fork into a bowl or cup. Serving an ice with the same fruit that it was made from, either tossed with a bit of sugar or poached, provides a beautiful contrast of taste and texture. Sherbet is made much the same way as an ice, but it is frozen in an ice-cream maker. The important difference is that sherbet needs to be sweeter to acquire the right texture. To find the amount of sweetness required, you should experiment a bit at first and sample small frozen amounts. Once you have done this a few times it will become second nature. Chill the mixture well before putting it into the ice-cream maker. This helps the sherbet freeze quickly, which helps keep the ice crystals small. It is a great treat to make more than one kind of sherbet, either from complementary fruits or from different varieties of the same one, and serve them together.
