Name: Turkish Sherbet
Ingredients: 2 pounds loaf sugar; 1½ pints water; 1½ pints strained lemon juice; 1 quart white veal stock

Why it works: Lemon and veal are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 17% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 4,580 recipes. Both carry 3-hexenal, which smells apple, fruity. The science ↓

Turkish Sherbet

Ingredients

2 pounds loaf sugar
1½ pints water
1½ pints strained lemon juice
1 quart white veal stock

Directions

Make the syrup

Boil the sugar with water until it forms a clear syrup.
Skim the syrup carefully and pour it into a bowl.

Finish and serve

When cold, stir in the lemon juice and veal stock.
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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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.

Lemon + vealtop 17% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together4,580 recipes

Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).
Sugar + lemontop 18% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together53,532 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
Sugar + vealtop 43% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together1,001 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

Sugar and lemon 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

What each ingredient does

Loaf sugar: Dissolves into the water to form a sweet syrup that gives the drink its body.
Strained lemon juice: Adds acidity that balances the sweetness of the syrup.

“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.