Name: Blackberry Sherbet
Ingredients: 3 quarts blackberries; 1 quart water; 2 cups sugar; juice of 4 lemons

Why it works: Sugar and lemon are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 18% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 53,532 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Blackberry Sherbet

Ingredients

3 quarts blackberries
1 quart water
2 cups sugar
juice of 4 lemons

Directions

Prepare

Mash the blackberries and sugar together and let it stand for 1 hour.

Cook and strain

Add the water and cook over medium heat for 20 minutes.
Remove from heat, add the lemon juice, and strain the mixture.

Freeze

Once cold, freeze the mixture like ice cream.

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.

Sugar + lemontop 18% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together53,532 recipes

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

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

Blackberries: Provide the main fruit flavor, color, and body of the sherbet.
Sugar: Sweetens the mixture and draws juice out of the berries while standing.
Lemon juice: Adds acidity that brightens the flavor and balances the sweetness.
Water: Thins the fruit mixture so it can be cooked and frozen smoothly.

“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.