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Dessert

How We Cook in Tennessee

A page of old Tennessee recipes for sherbets, fruit sauces, syrups and chocolate sauce, with directions for each.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
By Jackson (Tenn.). First Baptist Church. The Silver Thimble Society · From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 27 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 ↓

How We Cook in Tennessee

Ingredients

Directions

Strawberry sauce and ice cream

  1. Pour the sauce over the whipped cream or plain cream.

  2. Serve the sauce at once.

  3. Put the sauce around the cream and not over it.

  4. Make plain ice cream.

  5. Add sherry to taste when the ice cream has begun to freeze.

  6. Boil the strawberry juice with the sugar.

  7. Cool the strawberry sauce.

  8. Add the lemon juice to the strawberry sauce.

  9. Serve the strawberry sauce ice cold.

Orange and lemon syrup

  1. Add some peel to the lemon or orange juice with the sugar.

  2. Boil the syrup ten minutes.

  3. Strain the syrup and cook it.

Chocolate sauce

  1. Melt the butter and melt the chocolate with it.

  2. Add the sugar, boiling water and salt to the melted chocolate.

  3. Boil the chocolate sauce fifteen minutes.

  4. Flavor the chocolate sauce with vanilla.

  5. Serve the chocolate sauce with ice cream.

Lemonade and sherbet

  1. Make one quart of lemonade with three lemons.

  2. When nearly frozen, add one pint of cream sweetened and flavored with vanilla.

  3. Boil the water and sugar together, taking off the scum.

  4. Set the syrup aside to cool.

  5. Squeeze the juice from the oranges and lemons.

  6. Grate the rind of four lemons and two oranges and put it in the juice.

  7. Add the juice to the boiled syrup.

  8. Add the stiffly beaten egg whites last.

  9. Freeze the sherbet.

  10. Soften the gelatine in the cold water for five minutes.

  11. Add the softened gelatine to the quart of water.

Nutrition, whole recipe (rough)

653Calories
11 gProtein
32 gFat
86 gCarbs

Counts 10 of 11 ingredients. The other 1 aren't in our nutrition table and add nothing above, so the real totals are higher.

What these numbers assume: 10 portions
IngredientPortion assumedkcal
Chocolate1 oz (28g) semisweet155
Butter1 tbsp (14g)102
Apple1 medium (182g)95
Egg1 large egg (50g)78
Orange1 medium (131g)62
Cream1 tbsp (15ml) heavy51
Strawberry1 cup (152g)49
Sugar1 tbsp (12.5g) granulated49
Lemonjuice of 1 lemon (48ml)12
Salt1 tsp (6g)0
Waternot in our table0

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

By Jackson (Tenn.). First Baptist Church. The Silver Thimble Society. 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.

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

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

  2. Lemon + pinetop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together480 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  3. Strawberry + orangetop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together726 recipes

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

  4. Cream + buttertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  5. Cream + sugartop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Stiffly beaten whites add lightness and foam to the sherbet.
Gelatine
Sets and stabilizes the sherbet so it holds its body when frozen.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and keeps the frozen mixture from freezing rock hard.
Cream
Adds richness and a smooth, creamy body to the ice cream.
Chocolate
Gives the sauce its flavour and thick, rich body.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the flavour of the sauce and sherbet.

The step that matters

Add the stiffly beaten egg whites last. Folding the whites in at the end keeps the air they hold from being deflated, so the sherbet stays light and foamy rather than dense.

Swap the strawberry

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Coconutfits better
  3. Raspberryfits better
  4. Strawberrythe original

Fit is the average pairing score against cream, lemon, sugar, butter, chocolate, orange, pine. 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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