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Dessert

Larned Tea Sherbet

A chilled tea-based sherbet flavored with lemon and optional fruit or mint.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 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 ↓

Larned Tea Sherbet

Ingredients

Directions

Make the tea

  1. Measure 4 teaspoons of tea into a pitcher.

  2. Pour 1 quart of boiling water over the tea and cover it.

  3. Let it steep for 5 minutes, then strain and cool in a cold place.

Assemble and serve

  1. In a punch bowl, place a block of ice and add 1½ cups of sugar.

  2. Strain 5 tablespoons of lemon juice over the sugar.

  3. Add the cooled tea and, just before serving, mix in 1 pint of Apollinaris water.

  4. Garnish with strawberries, bits of fresh orange peel, or fresh mint if desired.

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 + minttop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,998 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  3. Tea + lemontop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together610 recipes

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

  4. Orange + minttop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together549 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  5. Tea + orangetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together333 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Tea
Provides the main flavour and bitterness that balances the sugar and acid.
Granulated sugar
Adds sweetness and helps soften the tart lemon juice.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the flavour and offsets the sweetness.
Apollinaris water
Adds carbonation, giving the sherbet a lively, bubbly texture.

The step that matters

Mix in the Apollinaris water just before serving. Carbonation escapes quickly once the water is poured and stirred, so adding it late keeps the drink fizzy rather than flat.

Swap the orange

The recipe marks orange as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (tea, sugar, lemon, mint):

  1. Limefits about as well
  2. Orangethe original
  3. Raspberryfits less well
  4. Vanillafits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against tea, sugar, lemon, mint. 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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