cold cherry soup?

[cellio]

I'm looking for a recipe for cold cherry soup that isn't thin and doesn't use cornstarch for thickening. Either that, or advice on getting cornstarch not to make lumps. Any favorites?

Comments

[hrj.livejournal.com]

Add little bits of room temperature (never hot) liquid to the cornstarch. When it gets to that "gloopy" stage where it's runny if you ignore it but gets hard if you press on it, mix until you're certain there are no dry pockets. Then continue adding room temperature liquid until it's completely runny. Add to your hot liquid in a thin stream while whisking constantly, and continue whisking constantly while it thickens. If some of the cornstarch has settled thickly in the bottom of the pouring container, either ignore it or thin it out with some more room temperature liquid. Never add hot liquid to the cornstarch solution -- always the other way around. It's the opposite rule than for egg yolks and hot liquids so this may be counter-intuitive. If you add hot liquid to the cornstarch solution, it "cooks" the cornstarch very intensely where it first hits it, forming the lumps you can never get rid of, whereas if you add the cornstarch solution to the hot liquid the cornstarch diffuses before it starts thickening up.

[cellio]

Thanks!

[hrj.livejournal.com]

When I wrote that, I was blanking on the reason why the rules are opposite for egg yolks and cornstarch, but on consideration my best guess is that it's because egg yolks thicken because the protein denatures, while corn (and other) starch thicken because heating causes the starch granules to expand and soak up liquid like a sponge. The protein denaturing happens immediately when the protein comes in contact with a heat source (thus the need to heat it slowly by adding small amounts of hot liquid to a larger amount of egg) whereas the starch effect takes a little while. That doesn't explain everything, but it's a start on the underlying chemistry.