No doubt, sorbet came to us from the East. India is considered his homeland. There he is known as Sharbat. In the countries of the spread of the Arabic language, they began to call it similar. It was called a sharba there, and in Turkey it has already received its final, familiar to us name sherbet. However, it was originally a drink! Yes, yes, and not creamy and fruit sausages, familiar to us from childhood, that look like halva. So what is sorbet? This is a drink that was prepared from licorice with the addition of various spices, as well as roses, dogwood or rose hips. When the Ottoman Empire advanced its borders far north, Europeans became acquainted with many of the delights of Turkish cuisine. It was not only coffee, shurpa and ice cream. Among these gastronomic borrowings was sorbet. This contributed to the fact that sweetness quickly gained the widest popularity in Europe, although slightly modified. Now they began to call it that ... ice cream mixed in a large number of berries or fruits, nuts, raisins. Therefore, in the West, the term “sorbet” is used to characterize low-calorie refreshing sweetness. This is what distinguishes it from a creamy ice cream.
But in Europe, there remained another, no less modified meaning of the word "sherbet." This is syrup. Do you hear in his sound an echo of the Arab "sharba"? More than a thousand years ago, a drink made from fruit juice with the addition of honey, cinnamon and spices was prepared in the Moorish kingdoms on the Iberian Peninsula. Well, now syrups are produced chemically with the addition of sugar.
Sherbet suffered the same sad metamorphosis on the sixth of the land, where socialism triumphed. Cheap pressed briquettes of powdered sugar, mixed in cream or milk, also began to be produced by the domestic Food Industry under the trade name "Sherbet". This is a blatant ignorance, because in such creamy fudge there are no fruits. And juice is an indispensable condition for oriental sweetness. In a drink or in ice cream, the fruit fraction should be dominant. And in our briquettes added cream, chocolate, nuts.
So let's get back to basics and make a real fruit sorbet. This drink is not intended to satisfy hunger. It has quite a few calories. But it perfectly refreshes and tones. Different berries have their own cooking rules. However, the general principle is as follows. We wash the fruits, remove solid particles (stalks, seeds, seeds). Apples, pears and other dense fruits are generally mashed. Then pour them with sugar syrup. Some fruits are a little boiled, but just a little bit. Then we filter the liquid through a fine sieve to remove all solid particles. And cool. Further - at your discretion. You can mix sorbet with wine. If you want to get a dessert in the form of ice cream, then rub it with ice.
And what about the proportions? It depends on the sweetness of fruits or berries. For example, strawberry sorbet is made at the rate of a glass of sugar and two glasses of water per kilogram of berries. We prepare syrup, cool a little and pour fresh juice there. But grape sorbet is made of two glasses of water and a pound of sugar. In addition, the berries are also boiled separately for two minutes (one and a half glasses of water per kilogram of unripe grapes). When the broth with syrup is combined, all the liquid is filtered and kept on low heat for another two minutes.