Peach Ice

Glace aux pêches (peach ice) teaches the law of every fruit ice: ripeness supplies body as surely as aroma. Sugar cannot make a hard peach taste ripe; it can only make pale water sweet. Choose peaches that smell fragrant before you cut them, wall-grown fruit if fortune hands it to you, with flesh that gives readily beneath the thumb.

The original pastry kitchen reached for prepared purée, standard syrup, a saccharometer, and a freezing pail packed with salted ice. At home, a small saucepan, a scale, and an ice cream machine or shallow metal pan do the same honest work. I have halved the book's pint-for-pint formula for four generous portions. The brigade quantity and hand-cranked pail were scaffolding, so they can go; equal measures of purée and syrup, the lemon, and the final density are the dish and must stay. One cook, one stove, one evening.

Properly made, the glace aux pêches is softly coral, fragrant, and fine-grained, with enough lemon to lift the fruit without announcing itself. Taste and calibrate the mixture before it freezes, because cold mutes both sweetness and perfume. The step that matters most comes first: don't begin until the peaches smell fully ripe.