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Dessert

Shenandoah Sherry Cobbler

A fruit cobbler made with pineapple, oranges, lemons, raspberries, powdered sugar, sherry, water, and pounded ice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Orange and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 10,634 recipes. Both carry 3-hexenal, which smells apple, fruity. The science ↓

Shenandoah Sherry Cobbler

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Layer sliced pineapple, oranges, and lemons in a large bowl.

  2. Sprinkle powdered sugar over the fruit in layers.

  3. Add raspberries if desired.

  4. Pour sherry and water over the fruit and sugar.

Chill and serve

  1. Cover the mixture with pounded ice.

  2. When ready to serve, stir well and fill glasses.

Recipe from a historical cookbook (Internet Archive).

Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.

  1. Orange + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,634 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  2. Pineapple + orangetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,664 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl isobutyrate (fruity, ethereal).

  3. Pineapple + sherrytop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together228 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl isobutyrate (fruity, ethereal).

  4. Pineapple + lemontop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,964 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  5. Orange + sherrytop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together823 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl isobutyrate (fruity, ethereal).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Powdered sugar
Sweetens the punch and dissolves into the sherry and water as it sits.
Sherry
Provides the main liquid and wine flavor base of the cobbler.
Lemons
Add acidity that balances the sweetness of the sugar and fruit.
Oranges
Add fruity sweetness and aromatic citrus oils to the punch.
Pineapple
Adds juicy, tangy fruit flavor and body to the mixture.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (pineapple, orange, sugar, sherry):

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Figfits better
  3. Apricotfits better
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against pineapple, orange, sugar, sherry. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.

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