Shcherbet is a sweetness or a drink?

No doubt, the sherbet came to us from the East. His homeland is considered India. There he is known as the Sharbat. In the countries of the spread of the Arabic language, it began to be called like. He was called a sharbi there, and in Turkey he already received his final, familiar name sherbet. However, originally it was a drink! Yes, yes, and not familiar to us since childhood, creamy-fruit sausages, seemingly similar to halva. So what is sherbet? This is a drink that was prepared from liquorice with the addition of various spices, as well as roses, dogwood or dogrose. When the Ottoman Empire moved its borders far to the north, Europeans became acquainted with many delights of Turkish cuisine. It was not just coffee, shurpa, and ice cream. Among such gastronomic loans was sherbet. This contributed to the fact that sweets quickly received the widest popularity in Europe, though somewhat modified. Now they began to call it ... ice cream, mixed with a lot of berries or fruits, nuts, raisins. Therefore, in the West, the term "sorbet" is used to characterize a low-calorie cooling sweetness. This is different from the creamy "seal".

But in Europe there is another, not less modified meaning of the word "sherbet". This is syrup. Do you hear in its sound the echo of the Arabian "sharb"? More than a thousand years ago, a drink of 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.

The same sad metamorphosis was also experienced by the sherbet on the sixth part of the land, where socialism won. Cheap pressed briquettes of powdered sugar, mixed with cream or milk, were also produced by the domestic food industry under the trade name "sherbet". This is a blatant illiteracy, because in such creamy fondant there are no fruits. And juice is an indispensable condition of eastern sweetness. In a drink or in ice cream, the fruit fraction should be dominant. And at us in a briquettes were added cream, chocolate, nuts.

So let's go back to the origins and prepare a real fruit sherbet. This drink is not meant to satisfy hunger. It has quite a few calories. But it perfectly refreshes and tones. Different berries have their own rules of preparation. However, the general principle is as follows. My fruit, remove the hard particles (stems, seeds, seeds). Apples, pears and other dense fruits in general we judge. Then fill them with sugar syrup. Some fruits are slightly cooked, but quite a bit. Then strain the liquid through a fine sieve to remove all solid particles. And we cool. Next - at your discretion. You can mix sherbet with wine. If you want to get a dessert in the form of ice cream, then rub it with ice.

And how about the proportions? It depends on the sweetness of the fruit or berries. For example, a strawberry sherbet is made from the calculation of a glass of sugar and two glasses of water per kilogram of berries. We prepare the syrup, cool it a bit and pour fresh in there. But grape sherbet is made from two glasses of water and a half kilogram of sugar. In addition, the berries separately, too, boil for two minutes (one and a half glasses of water per kilogram of unripe grapes). When the broth with the syrup is combined, all the liquid is filtered and kept on low heat for another two minutes.