Name: Buford Sherbet
Ingredients: 1 pint water; 1 lb sugar; 1½ lb large raisins; 1½ lb figs, cut fine; ½ stick cinnamon; 3 cloves; 3 oranges; 1 lemon; 1 cup white grape juice

Why it works: Cinnamon and clove 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 ↓

Buford Sherbet

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the fruit syrup

Boil water and sugar together to make a syrup.
Cut raisins and figs finely and place them in an earthen bowl.
Pour the boiling syrup over the raisins and figs and let it stand until cold.

Finish and freeze

Remove the cinnamon and cloves, then add the orange, lemon, and grape juice to the syrup and fruit mixture.
Freeze the mixture until solid.

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.

Cinnamon + clovetop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together14,189 recipes

Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).
Orange + lemontop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together10,634 recipes

Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).
Raisin + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together5,390 recipes

Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).
Cinnamon + orangetop 3% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together3,437 recipes

Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).
Fig + grapetop 4% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together323 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

Sugar: Dissolves into the boiled water to form a syrup that sweetens the sherbet.
Raisins: Add sweetness and body to the fruit mixture as they soften in the syrup.
Figs: Add sweetness, body and a soft, chewy texture to the fruit mixture.
White grape juice: Adds liquid and fruit sweetness, helping the mixture freeze into a smooth sherbet.

Swap the grape

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sugar, raisin, fig, cinnamon, clove, orange, lemon):

Vanillafits better
Cranberryfits better
Quincefits better
Grapethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, raisin, fig, cinnamon, clove, orange, lemon. 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.