Pine-apple Ice

Glace à l'ananas (pineapple ice) teaches the discipline behind every good fruit ice: extraction comes before freezing. Grated pineapple must sit in syrup for the full two hours so its perfume moves into the liquid. Hurry it and the syrup says nothing, however ripe the fruit.

The original entry assumed cold syrup waiting on the pastry station, a hair sieve, a pèse-sirop (syrup hydrometer), and a sorbetière (hand-cranked freezer) packed with salted ice. A home saucepan makes the syrup, a fine-mesh sieve does the rubbing, an optional refractometer reads the same sugar balance, and a countertop churn or shallow metal pan handles the freezing. The source's pint of fruit and pint of syrup are halved to one cup each, preserving its equal-volume ratio while giving four generous servings. One cook, one stove, one evening.

Prepared syrup and the tending of salted ice were brigade scaffolding; they can go. Maceration, sieving, lemon, kirsch, and testing to 18° to 20° Baumé stay because they are the dish. The one step that matters most is the two-hour maceration. Give it every minute.