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Dessert

Sorbet De Fraises

A chilled strawberry sorbet made by crushing strawberries, infusing with lemon and orange flower water, then straining, sweetening, and filtering.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and orange 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 ↓

Sorbet De Fraises

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no cooking times; the times in the steps were added in transcription, so check for doneness rather than trusting the clock.

Prepare and infuse

  1. Remove the stems from the strawberries and crush them.

  2. Mix the crushed strawberries with 1 pint of water.

  3. Add lemon juice and orange flower water, then let infuse for 2-3 hours.

Strain and sweeten

  1. Strain the mixture through a cloth into another container.

  2. Press the solids to extract all liquid, then add the sugar and stir until dissolved.

  3. Filter the liquid again until clear.

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. Lemon + orangetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,634 recipes

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

  2. Lemon + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

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

  3. Orange + sugartop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together19,212 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

Lemon and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 53,532 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Strawberries
Provide the main fruit flavor and the colour of the sorbet.
Granulated sugar
Adds sweetness and keeps the frozen sorbet soft and scoopable by lowering its freezing point.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the strawberry flavour and balances the sweetness.
Orange flower water
Adds a delicate floral aroma that complements the strawberries.

The step that matters

Filtering the liquid again until clear. Fine solids left in the liquid freeze into a gritty, cloudy texture. Repeated straining removes them, giving a smooth, clean-tasting sorbet.

“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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