Recipe: Gill Meller’s Blackcurrant Ripple Goat’s Milk Sorbet

Summer calls for sorbet. This recipe, taken from Gill Meller’s new book Root, Stem, Leaf, Flower, is made with fresh goat’s milk, sweetened with honey and flavoured with thyme.

Recipe: Gill Meller’s Blackcurrant Ripple Goat’s Milk Sorbet

Blackcurrants are the tannin blood of July; wild and sour things, broken by the bridle of sugar and heat. The blackcurrant is a complex yet reassuring fruit and perfect with the youth-like flavour of milk. Fresh goat’s milk, which I’m using here, makes a wonderful sorbet. I like to add a little goat’s yoghurt too, because I like the zing. Honey alone sweetens the sorbet itself and I add thyme because it feels so right. The blackcurrant gets rippled through the churned sorbet, just before it goes into the freezer, which creates this amazing contrast of flavours.

Ingredients

Serves 4-6

• 500ml goat’s milk
• 100g runny honey
• 2 thyme sprigs
• Small pinch of fine sea salt
• 250ml of goat’s cheese milk yoghurt for the compote
• 200g blackcurrants
• 50g unrefined caster sugar

Method

1. First, make the compote. Place the blackcurrants in a pan with the sugar and 1 tablespoon of water. Cook for 1–2 minutes over a low heat. You’re looking for a very lightly cooked compote with a little sharpness. Allow the compote to cool, then transfer to the fridge to chill.
2. Make the sorbet base. Pour the goat’s milk into a clean pan and add the honey, thyme sprigs and salt. Warm the milk until the honey has dissolved, then remove from the heat, transfer to a bowl and allow to cool. Remove the thyme sprigs and stir in the yoghurt.
3. Churn the sorbet base in an ice-cream machine until soft-set, then transfer to a tub and stir through the chilled compote. Place the tub in the freezer, until needed. (You may need to churn the sorbet in two batches, using half the compote each time.)
4. Remove the sorbet from the freezer at least 25 minutes before you intend to serve it. Scoop the sorbet out with a hot scoop or spoon and serve in bowls or cones.

Recipe taken from Root, Stem, Leaf, Flower by Gill Meller. Published by Quadrille, May 2020. Photography by Andrew Montgomery.

MORE RECIPES:

Gill Meller’s Baked Mushrooms / Purple Risotto with Beetroot