You've seen it many times-good sorbet gone bad. What turned the sweet sorbet you nurtured into this icy, tart dessert you barely recognize? As hard as they might be to hear, here are the answers.

Bad sorbets are easy to spot. They're the ones with large ice crystals, muted flavors and overwhelming tartness. Bad sorbets make your teeth ache. Creating the perfect sorbet-sinfully smooth, alive with flavor and nary an ice crystal in sight-simply requires a delicate balance of flavors, a deft hand with the ice cream maker and a whole lot of sugar.

Photo: Courtesy of California Tree Fruit Agreement

Sugar
A good sorbet is sweet (it is a dessert, after all) but not overwhelming, and the texture is firm but yielding. Sugar is the single most important ingredient in a sorbet. Use too much and not only will your sorbet be cloyingly sweet, but its texture will be slushy and wet. More often than not, however, you will find sorbets that don't have enough sugar, as evidenced by the enamel-stripping tartness and the crunch of iciness between your teeth. Sorbets don't taste as sweet after they are frozen, so the biggest mistake people make is just adding enough sugar so that the sorbet base tastes sweet. But once frozen, and air is incorporated, the sweetness dissipates. There are many ways to determine how much sugar is enough, from the old-fashioned technique of floating an egg in your sugar syrup (when there is enough sugar the egg will sink so that an area just the size of a quarter is visible above the liquid) to the more modern (and costly) refractometer. But in our opinion, the traditional, low-tech method of trial and error works best. Is your sorbet made with 1/2 cup of sugar too icy? Try more. Take notes. Once you develop basic proportions, adapting for different flavors will be easy.

Alcohol
The higher the alcohol content of your sorbet, the lower the temperature at which it freezes. That means you can adjust the level of alcohol to keep the sorbet soft, and therefore able to add less sugar (so your sorbet isn't candy-sweet). But, like sugar, if you add too much alcohol, the sorbet won't set. Again, trial and error. Keep in mind that different liquors have different alcohol contents; 1 tablespoon of vodka will affect the texture more than it will the flavor, while 1 tablespoon of amaretto, conversely, will affect the flavor more than the texture. You can always boil liqueur (or liquor) to remove the alcohol but still add flavor.

Egg
Another common ingredient in sorbet is whipped egg white, either raw or folded into sugar syrup (called an "Italian meringue"). Egg whites aerate the sorbet (making it lighter) and thus reduce the sugar concentration, which in turn affects the texture (see Sugar, above). Eggs are certainly not required to make a good sorbet-some chefs like the texture eggs provide, while others don't really notice a difference. The best way to know what you like is to try them for yourself.

Fruit
You can play with the texture of a fruit sorbet by adjusting the fruit content. Fruit pulp adds body and yields softer texture. Too much fruit, however, and your sorbet won't hold together. Try a balance of fruit purée and fruit juice to achieve your desired consistency.

Freezing
An ice cream machine serves two functions: it freezes and it aerates by churning the mixture within. The more it is churned the lighter the sorbet (or ice cream) gets. Many people, however, tend to overload the machine so the mixture can't aerate enough. The result: dense sorbet. Be sure to leave plenty of room inside the machine for the mixture to churn and incorporate enough air.

Restaurant kitchens generally make large batches of sorbet, in contrast to the one-quart capacity of most home ice cream makers. A large batch of sorbet in a commercial freezer isn't a great combination-if sorbet sets too long in the freezer it will get hard and icy. If this happens, you can melt it down and rechurn it in an ice cream maker to aerate and smooth the texture. Of course, this won't be a problem for home cooks-the last time we made a batch of sorbet at home it only lasted 35 minutes!