Sweet & Sour Mix and Lemon Sherbet

Busy bars use sweet & sour to serve sours quickly. Make it fresh instead of buying a bottled mix: combine equal parts fresh lemon juice and simple syrup, with a little lime for brightness. Use within two days, because fresh citrus fades quickly.

Grate the lemon and orange zest. Rub it hard into the sugar, adding the orange juice as you go, until you have a thick paste. Simmer the paste on low heat with the water, lemon juice, star anise and sliced satsumas. While it cools at room temperature, drop in the mint leaves. Once cool, strain through fine muslin.

Dilute the sherbet one-to-one with water for lemonade; use it undiluted as a syrup; or add one egg white (or 5 g egg white powder) to make an organic sour mix. Garnish with a sprig of mint.

Lemon and lime juice contain roughly 6% acid, orange about 0.8%. Every 15 ml of lemon juice adds about 0.9 g of acid to a drink: 0.6 g citric and 0.3 g malic.

Bottle in a clean, sanitized container, label with the date and refrigerate at 4 °C or below. Discard any batch that turns cloudy, fizzy, moldy or smells off.