Name: Berry Sherbet
Ingredients: one pound of berries; one quart of water; one teaspoonful of orange flavor; one pound of powdered sugar; one lemon sliced

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 ↓

Berry Sherbet

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

Crush one pound of berries.
Add them to one quart of water, one sliced lemon, and one teaspoonful of orange flavor, if available.
Let the mixture stand in an earthen bowl for three hours.

Strain and sweeten

Strain, squeezing all the juice out of the fruit.
Dissolve one pound of powdered sugar in the strained liquid.
Strain again.

Chill

Put on the ice until ready to serve.

Nutrition, whole recipe (rough)

123Calories

2 gProtein

0 gFat

31 gCarbs

Counts 3 of 4 ingredients. The other 1 aren't in our nutrition table and add nothing above, so the real totals are higher.

What these numbers assume: 3 portions

Ingredient	Portion assumed	kcal
Orange	1 medium (131g)	62
Sugar	1 tbsp (12.5g) granulated	49
Lemon	juice of 1 lemon (48ml)	12
Water	not in our table	0

One typical portion per ingredient; the recipe's quantities are not counted. A rough guide only, not for medical or dietary planning.

By Goff, May Perrin, [from old catalog] ed. 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. See the original page.

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.

Orange + lemontop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together10,634 recipes

Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).
Sugar + lemontop 18% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together53,532 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
Orange + sugartop 20% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together19,212 recipes

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

Sugar and lemon 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

Berries: Provide the main fruit flavor and colour, with juice released by crushing.
Powdered sugar: Sweetens the liquid and dissolves fully into it for a smooth sherbet.
Lemon: Adds acidity that brightens the fruit flavor.

“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.