Skip to main content
Drink

Rhubarb Sherbet

A chilled rhubarb beverage made by boiling rhubarb, straining, adding lemon and sugar, and cooling.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Rhubarb and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 546 recipes. Both carry acetic acid, which smells sour, vinegar. The science ↓

Rhubarb Sherbet

Ingredients

Directions

Make the rhubarb liquid

  1. Boil the rhubarb in water for about 10 minutes.

  2. Strain the liquid into a jug.

Flavour and rest

  1. Add the lemon peel and sugar to the jug.

  2. Let it stand for 3 hours before serving.

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. Rhubarb + lemontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together546 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

  2. Lemon + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

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

  3. Rhubarb + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,852 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-penten-3-one (fish, pungent).

Lemon and sugar 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

Rhubarb
Provides the main tart flavour and the body of the sherbet.
White sugar
Adds sweetness that balances the sharp tartness of the rhubarb.
Lemon
Adds bright citrus acidity and aroma.

The step that matters

Let it stand for 3 hours before serving. Resting gives the sugar and lemon time to dissolve and blend into the liquid, so the flavour becomes more even and balanced rather than sharp or uneven.

Swap the rhubarb

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

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Gingerfits better
  3. Marjoramfits better
  4. Rhubarbthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against lemon, 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

Rhubarb WineRhubarb Wine51 recipesLemon WheyLemon Whey33 recipesLemon WineLemon Wine31 recipesLemon SquashLemon Squash10 recipes