Sorbet Flashback

Nancy Baggett of cookbook and Kitchen Lane fame writes in with a great tip on making sorbet mix:

A technique I use all the time is to boil together the sugar, the water and the peels of peaches or plums, then strain the mixture to form a flavored and colored simple syrup base. This produces a fine sorbet with no need for gelatin, etc., at all. I’m guessing that the boiling with the fruit peels not only inverts the sugar but releases some pectin from the fruit skins–both of which [create a] smooth texture.

You’re exactly right, Nancy. Pectins released from the skins of the fruit will work as stabilizers in the finished sorbet, provided they aren’t boiled terribly long (as prolonged heat destroys pectin). As far as the invert sugar is concerned, I’m not sure that fruit peels would contain enough acid to break all those sucrose molecules down into glucose and fructose, but who knows? Perhaps they do. That is one cool technique!

UPDATE: Here it is at Kitchen Lane.