Pennsylvania · Dessert
Philadelphia Water Ice
- Intermediate
- 4 h
- roughly 1 of 4 for cost
- Vegetarian
- Vegan
Leads with acid holding everything up to the light.
Ingredients
- 500ml water
- 200g sugar
- 500g fruit: lemon juice, cherries, or mango, pureed
- Pinch of salt
Equipment
Food processor
The skills inside
The words inside
Allergen screen
None found among the 14 screened.
Screened for: gluten, dairy, egg, nuts, peanuts, fish, shellfish, molluscs, soy, sesame, celery, mustard, lupin, alcohol. Not screened: sulphites.
Screened by keyword from the ingredient list, not reviewed by a person; check every label for what the list cannot show.
Method
- Boil the water and sugar together until the sugar dissolves, then cool completely.
- Blend the syrup with the fruit puree or juice and the salt.
- Freeze in a shallow pan, scraping and stirring every 30 min for 3-4 hours. 30 min
- Once fully frozen, work it hard with a fork or pulse in a processor to break every crystal down.
- Serve with a flat wooden spoon: it should be smooth and scoopable, never crunchy like a granita.
How to tell it is going right
This dish has no standard of its own yet. It is judged on the technique it exercises: checked at the pan, while there is still something to be done about it.
Mashing & puréeing 114 recipes
- Smooth to the degree the dish asks for, judged on the tongue rather than by eye: no lumps, no fibres, no grit, unless texture is the point.
- No gluey elasticity: a spoonful drops cleanly off the spoon rather than stretching in a rope behind it.
- The consistency holds: it mounds on a spoon and stays there, neither slumping flat nor standing so stiff that a spoon has to cut it.
- Nothing separates on the plate: no water or fat weeping out into a ring within a minute of serving.
- The colour is even throughout, with no streaks of unincorporated fat, liquid, or seasoning at the edges of the bowl.
Where it goes wrong A starchy ingredient met a high-speed blade, so the cells burst and released their starch: what should be light comes out as an elastic glue that lifts off the spoon in one mass.
At the Table
- The Pour
- Moscato d’Asti
- Also Right
- Late-harvest Riesling
- From the Taps
- Witbier
- Zero-Proof
- Sparkling elderflower
Citrus desserts need a wine sweeter than they are, with acid enough to keep up: light, frothy, and low-proof wins.
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