Skip to main content
Drink

Sherry Cobbler

A chilled cocktail of sherry wine, sugar, orange slices, shaved ice, garnished with berries.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Sherry and orange work together. They rank in the top 13% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 823 recipes. Both carry ethyl isobutyrate, which smells fruity, ethereal. The science ↓

Sherry Cobbler

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Combine sherry wine and sugar in a large bar glass.

  2. Add orange slices and fill the glass with shaved ice.

  3. Shake well to mix the ingredients.

  4. Garnish with berries and place a straw in the glass.

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. Sherry + orangetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together823 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl isobutyrate (fruity, ethereal).

  2. Wine + orangetop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,046 recipes

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

  3. Sugar + orangetop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together19,212 recipes

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

  4. Sherry + sugartop 22% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together4,141 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  5. Wine + sugartop 31% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together9,581 recipes

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

Sugar and orange barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 19,212 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

Sherry wine
Forms the wine base and provides the main flavour of the drink.
Sugar
Adds sweetness to balance the dry, fortified wine.
Orange slices
Add citrus aroma and a bright, fresh flavour.
Shaved ice
Chills the drink and slowly dilutes it as it melts.

The step that matters

Shake well to mix the ingredients.. Sugar dissolves much more easily when it is agitated in the liquid, so a thorough shake keeps sweetness even throughout. Shaking with ice also chills the drink quickly and adds a little controlled dilution, which softens the sherry's strength.

Swap the orange

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Applefits better
  3. Pineapplefits better
  4. Orangethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sherry, wine, sugar. 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.

You might also like

Wine WheyWine Whey111 recipesRaisin WineRaisin Wine64 recipesEgg WineEgg Wine58 recipesElderberry WineElderberry Wine51 recipes