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Dessert

Sorbet

A chilled sorbet made with lemon and orange juice, powdered sugar, rum, champagne, and brandy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 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 ↓

Sorbet

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the base

  1. Peel the oranges and lemons, then squeeze out all the juice.

  2. Dissolve the powdered sugar in boiling water, then let it cool.

  3. Add the cooled sugar water to the juice.

Freeze and finish

  1. Freeze the mixture very hard, following the method for Lemon Water-Ice.

  2. Once firm, add the rum, champagne, and brandy.

  3. Re-cover the mixture and churn briefly to mix well.

  4. Remove the dasher, re-cover, and pack with salt and ice.

  5. Set aside for 2 hours, covering with a piece of carpet.

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. Rum + champagnetop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together137 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl isobutyrate (fruity, ethereal).

  3. Rum + brandytop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,058 recipes

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

  4. Champagne + brandytop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together169 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  5. Rum + orangetop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together801 recipes

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

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Powdered sugar
Dissolved in water to sweeten the juice and soften the frozen texture.
Rum
Adds aroma and flavour, and lowers the freezing point so the sorbet stays scoopable.
Champagne
Adds liquid and a light aromatic flavour while keeping the sorbet smooth.
Brandy
Adds aroma and alcohol, which keeps the sorbet softer after freezing.
Lemons
Provide acidity and bright citrus flavour that balance the sugar.
Oranges
Provide juice, sweetness and citrus aroma to the base.

The step that matters

Add the alcohol only once the mixture is firm. Alcohol lowers the freezing point, so adding rum, champagne and brandy to a liquid mix would keep it from freezing properly. Waiting until it is firm lets the sorbet set while the spirits are folded in just enough to mix well.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (rum, orange, champagne, sugar, brandy):

  1. Pineapplefits better
  2. Vanillafits better
  3. Strawberryfits better
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against rum, orange, champagne, sugar, brandy. 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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