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Drink

Mixed Fruit Sherbet

A chilled beverage made from lemon juice, sugar, pineapple juice, strawberry juice, and water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Pineapple and strawberry match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 433 recipes. Both carry delta-dodecalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Mixed Fruit Sherbet

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Combine lemon juice, granulated sugar, pineapple juice, strawberry juice, and water in a bowl.

  2. Stir until the sugar is fully dissolved.

  3. Serve in glasses half filled with broken ice.

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. Pineapple + strawberrytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together433 recipes

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

  2. Lemon + pineappletop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,964 recipes

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

  3. Lemon + strawberrytop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,206 recipes

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

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

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

  5. Sugar + pineappletop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together4,841 recipes

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

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

Granulated sugar
Adds sweetness and body, and helps balance the acidity of the lemon juice.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the flavor and balances the sweetness.
Pineapple juice
Contributes fruity flavor and natural sweetness to the base.
Strawberry juice
Adds fruity aroma, flavor and color to the base.

The step that matters

Stir until the sugar is fully dissolved. Undissolved sugar leaves grainy crystals in the cold drink and makes the sweetness uneven. Thorough stirring gives a smooth, evenly sweetened base.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Bananafits better
  3. Peachfits better
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, pineapple, strawberry. 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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