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Dessert

Watermelon Sherbet

A chilled fruit dessert made from watermelon and a sweet sherry syrup.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Clove and cinnamon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,189 recipes. Both carry ethyl cinnamate, which smells sweet, balsamic. The science ↓

Watermelon Sherbet

Ingredients

Directions

Make the syrup

  1. Boil the sherry with loaf sugar until it thickens into a syrup, then allow it to cool.

Prepare the watermelon

  1. Chop the heart of the watermelon, discarding the white rind.

Freeze and serve

  1. Mix the cooled syrup with the chopped watermelon.

  2. Freeze the mixture in a freezer, but do not let it become too hard.

  3. 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. Clove + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,189 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  2. Sugar + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together30,779 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  3. Sherry + clovetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,237 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  4. Sherry + cinnamontop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together649 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  5. Sherry + sugartop 22% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together4,141 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

Sugar and cinnamon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 30,779 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

Pale sherry
Adds aroma and flavour, and its sugar syrup gives sweetness and body to the sherbet.
Loaf sugar
Sweetens the sherry and, once thickened into syrup, keeps the frozen mixture softer.
Watermelon
Provides the main fruit flavour and water content that freezes into the sherbet's texture.

The step that matters

Freezing without over-hardening. Freezing too long makes the mixture icy and hard. Sugar and alcohol lower the freezing point, so it should be checked and served while still spoonable.

Swap the clove

The recipe marks clove as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sherry, sugar, cinnamon):

  1. Nutmegfits better
  2. Clovethe original
  3. Allspicefits less well
  4. Gingerfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against sherry, sugar, cinnamon. 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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