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Dessert

Parisian Sherbet

A frozen dessert made from water, port wine, sugar, orange and lemon slices, raisins, nutmeg, egg whites, and food coloring.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Orange and lemon 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 ↓

Parisian Sherbet

Ingredients

Directions

Make the syrup

  1. Boil water and sugar together to make syrup.

  2. Slice oranges and lemon, then place them in a bowl.

  3. Pour the hot syrup over the sliced fruit and add the raisins and broken nutmeg.

  4. Let the mixture cool, then strain the syrup into a freezer.

Finish and freeze

  1. Add the port wine and enough food coloring to achieve a deep pink color.

  2. Incorporate the egg whites.

  3. Add the sliced fruit and raisins, ensuring to exclude any seeds.

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. Orange + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,634 recipes

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

  2. Lemon + nutmegtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,318 recipes

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

  3. Nutmeg + raisintop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,377 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-terpineol (lilac, floral).

  4. Orange + nutmegtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,746 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  5. Orange + raisintop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,684 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 water to form the syrup that sweetens the sherbet.
Egg whites
Whipped foam adds lightness and a smooth, airy texture to the frozen sherbet.
Port wine
Adds flavor and alcohol, which keeps the sherbet softer when frozen.
Oranges
Provide citrus flavor and acidity, with juice and peel flavoring the syrup.

The step that matters

Incorporate the egg whites. Egg whites must be beaten to stiff foam before folding in; unbeaten whites add little air, leaving a dense, icy texture after freezing.

Swap the raisin

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (port wine, sugar, orange, lemon, nutmeg, egg):

  1. Figfits better
  2. Vanillafits better
  3. Limefits better
  4. Raisinthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against port wine, sugar, orange, lemon, nutmeg, 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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