Name: Strawberry Sherbet
Ingredients: 3 lbs strawberries; 8 oz red currants; 1 pint water; sugar (to taste)

Why it works: Red currant and sugar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 26% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,156 recipes. Both carry 2,3-butanedione, which smells butter, sweet. The science ↓

Strawberry Sherbet

Ingredients

3 lbs strawberries
8 oz red currants
1 pint water
sugar (to taste)

Directions

Prepare the juice

Crush the strawberries and currants in a sieve and let the juice run into a deep dish or bowl.
Pour the water over the remaining strawberries in the sieve.

Sweeten and set

Melt sugar in a little water over the fire and add it to the juice.
Pour the mixture into a mold and adjust the sugar to taste.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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.

Red currant + sugartop 26% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together1,156 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

Strawberries: Provide the main fruit flavour, colour and body of the sherbet.
Red currants: Add tart acidity and a bright, sharp flavour to balance the sweetness.
Sugar: Sweetens the juice and helps give the frozen sherbet a softer texture.

“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.