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Dessert

Mille Fruit Sherbet

A sherbet made from pineapple, strawberries, navel oranges, peaches, cherries, sugar, snow, lemon and orange extracts, and water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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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 ↓

Mille Fruit Sherbet

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the fruit

  1. Cut enough ripe pineapples to make 1 quart of cubes.

  2. Clean and hull 1 quart of strawberries, then chop them into small pieces.

  3. Peel and chop 1 dozen ripe navel oranges medium fine.

  4. Peel and pit 1 dozen ripe peaches, then cut them into small pieces.

  5. Stem and pit 1 quart of cherries, then chop them fine.

  6. Mix all the fruits in a cooking vessel.

Make the syrup and sherbet

  1. Add 7 pounds of granulated sugar and enough water.

  2. Cook slowly for about 10 minutes.

  3. In a dry can or dish, mix the remaining 8 pounds of sugar with 8 to 10 ounces of snow thoroughly.

  4. Add the sugar and snow mixture to the cooked fruits, mixing thoroughly.

  5. Stir in 1 ounce of lemon extract, 1 ounce of orange extract, and 3½ gallons of water.

  6. Stir thoroughly and freeze in the usual manner.

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. Orange + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,634 recipes

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

  2. Pineapple + peachtop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together168 recipes

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

  3. Pineapple + orangetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,664 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl isobutyrate (fruity, ethereal).

  4. Orange + peachtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together385 recipes

    Shared aroma: pinene (pine, turpentine).

  5. Peach + lemontop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together947 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Granulated sugar
Sweetens the fruit and dissolves into the syrup, lowering the freezing point so the sherbet stays scoopable.
Strawberries
Add fruit flavor, color and moisture to the mixture.
Navel oranges
Add juice, acidity and citrus flavor to the fruit base.
Peaches
Add soft fruit texture, sweetness and body to the mixture.
Cherries
Add fruit flavor, color and acidity to the base.
Pineapple
Adds juicy body and bright tropical acidity to the fruit base.

The step that matters

Dissolving the sugar and snow mixture into the cooked fruit. Sugar lowers the freezing point of water, so it controls how much ice forms. If the sugar and snow are not mixed thoroughly before adding, pockets of sugar stay undissolved and the sherbet freezes unevenly and grainy.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Apricotfits better
  3. Mangofits better
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against pineapple, orange, peach, 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.

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