Why it works: Lemon and sugar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 18% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 53,532 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓
Apple Sherbet
Ingredients
Directions
Combine sweet cider, lemon juice, and sugar in a bowl.
Stir until the sugar is dissolved.
Freeze the mixture without heating.
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.
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Lemon + sugartop 18% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together53,532 recipes
Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
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Cider + lemontop 24% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together986 recipes
Shared aroma: linalool (floral, citrus).
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Cider + sugartop 27% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together3,308 recipes
Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).
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
Swap the lemon
How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (cider, sugar):
- Applefits better
- Vanillafits better
- Pearfits better
- Lemonthe original
Fit is the average pairing score against cider, sugar. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.
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