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Dessert

Apple Sherbet

Apple Sherbet is a frozen dessert made with apples, sugar, water, lemon and orange juice, and maraschino liqueur.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 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 ↓

Apple Sherbet

Ingredients

Directions

Make the base

  1. Boil the sugar and water for five minutes.

  2. Add the apples and cook until soft.

  3. Rub the mixture through a sieve and let it cool.

Finish and freeze

  1. Stir in the lemon and orange juices, and add food coloring.

  2. When partly frozen, add the maraschino liqueur and repack to ripen for 1-2 hours.

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. Apple + orangetop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,230 recipes

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

  3. Lemon + appletop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,551 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  4. Sugar + appletop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together16,478 recipes

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

  5. Sugar + lemontop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

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

Sugar and apple barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 16,478 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

Sour apples
Provide the main flavor and pectin that gives the sherbet body once cooked and sieved.
Granulated sugar
Sweetens the base and lowers its freezing point so the sherbet stays scoopable.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the sweetness and balances the apple flavor.
Orange juice
Adds acidity and citrus aroma that rounds out the flavor.
Maraschino liqueur
Adds aroma and some sugar-like softness, since alcohol resists freezing and keeps the texture smoother.

The step that matters

Adding the maraschino liqueur when partly frozen. Alcohol does not freeze solid, so adding it too early keeps the mixture from firming up. Adding it once partly frozen lets the sherbet set while keeping the liqueur's flavor and a softer texture.

Swap the apple

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

  1. Limefits better
  2. Vanillafits better
  3. Blueberryfits better
  4. Applethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, lemon, orange. 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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