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Dessert

Sherbet, for Punch

A citrus sherbet made with lemon pulp, sugar, water, wine, and spirit, used as a punch flavoring.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Wine and spirit work together. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 701 recipes. Both carry isoamyl acetate, which smells banana, fruity. The science ↓

Sherbet, for Punch

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the lemons

  1. Rub the sugar on the lemons until the yellow part is removed.

  2. Remove the white skin and seeds from the lemons.

  3. Slice the lemon pulp.

Make the syrup

  1. Combine the pulp and sugar in a bowl.

  2. Bruise the mixture together with a wooden spoon.

  3. Pour a little boiling water over the mixture and stir until the sugar dissolves.

  4. Let the syrup cool.

  5. Strain the cooled syrup.

Finish

  1. Add wine and spirit 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.

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. Wine + spirittop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together701 recipes

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, fruity).

  2. Lemon + winetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together6,157 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  3. Sugar + lemontop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

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

  4. Sugar + spirittop 25% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together602 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  5. Lemon + spirittop 26% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together256 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

Fine sugar
Dissolves into the boiling water to form a sweet syrup that balances the lemon's acidity.
Lemons
Provide the acidity and aromatic citrus flavour, with their pulp and juice forming the base of the sherbet.
Wine
Adds liquid body and flavour to the sherbet, added to taste.
Spirit
Adds alcoholic strength and aroma, added to taste.

The step that matters

Rubbing the sugar on the lemons. Sugar rubbed on the peel draws out the aromatic oils from the yellow zest, so it flavours the syrup. Rubbing too deeply or taking the white pith with the yellow peel adds bitterness, because the pith is bitter.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Applefits better
  3. Orangefits better
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, wine, spirit. 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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