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Dessert

Sicilian Sherbet

A frozen dessert made from peaches, orange juice, sugar, egg whites, ice, and salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Peach and orange match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 385 recipes. Both carry pinene, which smells pine, turpentine. The science ↓

Sicilian Sherbet

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the base

  1. Press the peaches through a colander.

  2. Add orange juice and sugar; stir until the sugar dissolves.

Freeze and finish

  1. Place the mixture in a freezer and pack it with ice and salt (3 parts ice to 1 part salt).

  2. Freeze, then remove the lid and stir in the beaten egg whites.

  3. Replace the lid and turn the dasher for 1-2 minutes.

  4. Serve after it has stood for 1 hour.

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. Peach + orangetop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together385 recipes

    Shared aroma: pinene (pine, turpentine).

  2. Peach + sugartop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,308 recipes

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

  3. Orange + sugartop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together19,212 recipes

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

  4. Sugar + eggtop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 recipes

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

  5. Peach + eggtop 29% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,048 recipes

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

Orange and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 19,212 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

Egg whites
Beaten whites add air and a light, fluffy texture to the frozen sherbet.
Sugar
Dissolves into the juice to add sweetness and soften the texture of the frozen mixture.
Peaches
Pressed through a colander, they supply fruit flavor and body to the sherbet.
Orange juice
Adds acidity and citrus flavor while contributing liquid to the base.

The step that matters

Stirring in the beaten egg whites. Egg whites must be beaten to hold air, and they should be folded in after the mixture has partly frozen. Stirring them in too early or too vigorously can deflate the foam and leave a denser sherbet.

Swap the orange

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (peach, sugar, egg):

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Apricotfits better
  3. Raspberryfits better
  4. Orangethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against peach, sugar, egg. 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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