Pear Ice

Glace aux Poires Williams (William pear ice) teaches the central rule of fruit ices: balance the fruit by density, not by blindly pouring in a fixed cup of water. The old 22° means 22° Baumé, about 39.5° Brix, and it gives this unusually sugar-rich formula a smooth, yielding freeze rather than a brittle block.

The source sets one pound of powdered sugar against two-thirds pound of cleaned pear, with two lemons for every pound of fruit. For a home batch, that becomes eight ounces of pear, twelve ounces of pure powdered sugar, and one lemon, with the ratio untouched. The confectioner's station had a mortar, a fine sieve, a syrup gauge, a salt-and-ice freezing pot, and spare hands to keep everything moving. Your food processor, sieve, refractometer, and ice cream machine do those jobs honestly. Hand pounding and constant cranking are brigade scaffolding and may go; the fine sieving and density balance are the dish and must stay. One cook, one stove, one evening, and the stove gets the night off.

When it's right, the ice is pale ivory, densely smooth, and fragrant enough that the pear reaches you before the first spoonful. Weigh the sugar, squeeze the lemon, and position the sieve before peeling anything, because cut pear browns while you look at it. The step that decides the dish is watering the strained purée back to 22° Baumé one spoonful at a time.