Sorbet Fruit Ratio Calculator: Purée, Water and Sugars
Table of contents
How much fruit belongs in a sorbet? Enough to taste of the fruit, not so much that the mix drifts out of balance. This page turns that judgement into arithmetic: pick a fruit ratio, read the sugar and solids the fruit already brings, then let added sugars and water fill the gap.
The Three Numbers a Fruit Ratio Has to Respect
Fruit ratio is the share of the finished mix that comes from fruit — purée, pulp or juice. It is the first lever you set, because it decides flavour intensity and, at the same time, silently contributes water, sugars and acid to every other total.
Whatever ratio you choose has to leave room for three targets that govern texture:
- Total Solids (TS) — everything that is not water. Sorbetto works in the 28–34% band. Below 28% the mix freezes hard and icy; above 34% it turns syrupy and never sets properly. See total solids for the full picture.
- PAC — anti-freezing power, the freezing-point depression contributed by the sugars. Sorbetto runs 270–290 because there is no fat and no milk solid softening the texture for you. Background in PAC.
- POD — relative sweetness on the palate, target 22–28. Acidic fruits sit at the top of that band, sweet fruits at the bottom. Background in POD.
Quick reference. Fruit ratio sets flavour; TS 28–34%, PAC 270–290 and POD 22–28 set texture. The calculator's job is to make one choice respect the other three.
Step 1 — Pick a Fruit Ratio by Fruit Family
Start from a family default rather than from a number you like. Delicate, water-rich fruits need volume to be tasted; concentrated or highly acidic ones do not.
| Fruit family | Working fruit ratio | Why |
|---|---|---|
| Citrus juices (lemon, lime, yuzu) | 20–28% | Very acidic and aromatic; more becomes mouth-puckering |
| Berries and stone fruits (strawberry, raspberry, peach) | 40–50% | Delicate flavour, high water content |
| Tropicals (mango, passion fruit, pineapple) | 30–40% | Concentrated aroma; higher ratios push TS out of range |
| Pomes and grapes (apple, pear, white grape) | 35–45% | Mild flavour that carries at a moderate ratio |
Two notes before you commit the number. First, check what you actually bought: many professional purées are sold sweetened at roughly 10% added sugar, so a "35% purée" recipe already carries about 3.5 percentage points of sugar you did not write down (choosing a purée covers the difference). Second, fruit ratio is a mass share of the whole mix, not of the liquid phase.
Step 2 — Read the Sugar Your Fruit Already Brings
Fruit is not a neutral flavour carrier. It is a dilute sugar solution with a little fibre and acid, and both its sugar and its solids belong in your totals. The figures below are approximate composition values for raw fruit from the USDA FoodData Central database, rounded to the nearest half point for bench use.
| Fruit (raw) | Sugars, g/100 g | Total solids, ~% | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| Watermelon | 6.0 | 9 | Very lean; needs a high TS target |
| Strawberry | 5.0 | 9 | Classic 45% ratio fruit |
| Raspberry | 4.5 | 14 | Solids include substantial fibre and seeds |
| Peach | 8.5 | 11 | Reliable mid-range fruit |
| Pineapple | 10.0 | 14 | Protease activity; pasteurise the purée |
| Pear | 10.0 | 16 | Mild; carries at 40% |
| Passion fruit pulp | 11.0 | 27 | Solids are mostly non-sugar |
| Banana | 12.0 | 25 | Sweet and solid-rich; use a low ratio |
| Mango | 14.0 | 16.5 | Sugar-forward tropical |
| Lemon juice | 2.5 | 8 | Almost no sugar; nearly all acid and water |
Two columns, two jobs. The sugars column feeds your sugar total, your PAC and your POD. The total solids column feeds TS, and for raspberry or passion fruit it is far larger than the sugar column, because fibre and seeds count as solids without depressing the freezing point at all. To measure your own fruit instead of trusting a table, a refractometer is the fastest route — with the caveat in Brix vs total solids, since °Bx reads dissolved solids, not all solids.
Step 3 — Solve for Added Sugar and Water
With a fruit ratio chosen and its composition read, the rest is subtraction. Work per 100 g of mix, then scale.
- Sugar from fruit = fruit ratio × the fruit's sugar fraction.
- Added sugar solids = your sugar target (26–31% for most sorbets) − sugar from fruit.
- Solids from fruit = fruit ratio × the fruit's total solids fraction.
- Stabilizer = 0.2–0.5% depending on the blend; see stabilizers for sorbetto.
- Water = 100 − fruit ratio − added sugar (as weighed, not as solids) − stabilizer.
Only then do you split the added sugar into a blend. Sucrose alone gets you sweetness but not enough PAC; the usual fix is to move a few points into dextrose, and a few more into glucose syrup, which adds solids and body with little sweetness. House reference values, per gram: sucrose PAC 100 / POD 100; dextrose PAC 190 / POD 70; invert sugar PAC 190 / POD 125; glucose syrup DE 38 PAC 23 / POD 50 at 80% solids.
Fruit sugars count too. They are a mixture of sucrose, glucose and fructose, so counting them at sucrose-equivalent PAC 100 is a deliberate floor — the real figure is higher in fructose-rich fruit, which is one reason very sweet fruits freeze softer than the arithmetic predicts.
Worked Example — Mango Sorbetto at 35% Fruit
Targets: TS 29% (mango is solid-rich, so the low end of the band), sugars ~28%, PAC 288, POD 26. Batch of 1000 g.
| Ingredient | grams | % of mix |
|---|---|---|
| Mango purée, unsweetened (16% TS, 14% sugars) | 350 | 35.0 |
| Sucrose | 175 | 17.5 |
| Dextrose | 30 | 3.0 |
| Glucose syrup DE 38 (80% solids) | 31 | 3.1 |
| Sorbet stabilizer | 3 | 0.3 |
| Water | 411 | 41.1 |
| Total | 1000 | 100.0 |
Verification, in the same order as the steps above:
- Sugar from fruit = 350 × 0.14 = 49 g.
- Added sugar solids = 175 + 30 + (31 × 0.80) = 229.8 g, so total sugar solids = 278.8 g → 27.9%.
- Solids from fruit = 350 × 0.16 = 56 g; TS = 56 + 229.8 + 3 = 288.8 g → 28.9%.
- PAC = (17.5 × 100 + 3.0 × 190 + 3.1 × 23 + 4.9 × 100) ÷ 10 = 288.
- POD = (17.5 × 100 + 3.0 × 70 + 3.1 × 50 + 4.9 × 100) ÷ 10 = 26.
All four land inside the target windows. POD 26 sits at the sweet end for a mango — defensible in a display case, but worth trimming by a point of sucrose if you want the fruit's acidity to read more sharply, or you can lift the acid instead with citric acid.
When the Numbers Fight the Fruit
Fruit ratio at the family maximum and TS still too low. Typical of watermelon, cucumber and lemon. Do not add fruit; add solids that are not sweet. Glucose syrup and a touch more stabilizer raise TS without pushing POD past the band.
TS in range but the sorbet is a brick. PAC is short. Move two or three points of sucrose into dextrose and re-run the sum before touching the fruit ratio — the diagnosis and the fixes are laid out in why sorbetto turns out too hard.
Flavour is muted at a high fruit ratio. Usually sweetness masking acidity rather than a shortage of fruit. Drop one point of sugar before adding purée.
Gritty or sandy body. Excess insoluble solids, common when a high-fibre fruit is pushed to a berry-style ratio; why sorbetto goes grainy covers the causes.
Run the arithmetic once per fruit and keep the sheet. The ratio you settle on is a property of that fruit at that ripeness, not a house constant.
