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Dessert

Sherbet, Strawberry

A chilled strawberry sherbet made with strawberries, lemon juice, orange‑flower water, cold spring water, and sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and orange 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 ↓

Sherbet, Strawberry

Ingredients

Directions

Infuse the fruit

  1. Bruise the strawberries well in a bowl.

  2. Mix in the lemon juice and orange‑flower water.

  3. Pour the cold spring water over the mixture and let it soak for 4 hours.

Sweeten and strain

  1. Powder the white sugar in another bowl.

  2. Squeeze the strawberry mixture through muslin into the bowl with sugar and stir until dissolved.

  3. Strain again and set on ice until ready to serve.

Serve

  1. Serve in glasses.

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. Lemon + orangetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,634 recipes

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

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

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

  3. Orange + sugartop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together19,212 recipes

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

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

Ripe strawberries
Supply the main flavour, colour and fruit pulp that gives the drink its body.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that balances the sweetness of the sugar and brightens the fruit flavour.
White sugar
Sweetens the drink and, once dissolved, balances the tartness of the lemon and fruit.
Orange‑flower water
Adds a floral aroma that complements the strawberry flavour.

The step that matters

Dissolving the sugar fully. Sugar must be stirred until it dissolves into the strained juice. Powdering it first helps it dissolve quickly; undissolved grains would leave the sherbet gritty and unevenly sweet.

“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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