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Dessert

Strawberry Sherbet

A chilled strawberry dessert made by bruising strawberries, mixing with lemon juice, orange‑flower water, and cold water, then straining over sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Strawberry Sherbet

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 ↓

Strawberry Sherbet

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the fruit

  1. Bruise the strawberries in a bowl.

  2. Mix in the lemon juice and orange-flower water.

  3. Pour in the cold water and let soak for 4 hours.

Sweeten and chill

  1. In a separate dish, powder the sugar.

  2. Strain the strawberry mixture through muslin into the sugar and stir until dissolved.

  3. Strain again and set on ice until ready to serve.

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.

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

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

  2. Sugar + lemontop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

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

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

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

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

Strawberries
Supply the main flavour, colour and fruit body of the sherbet.
Sugar
Provides sweetness that balances the fruit's tartness.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the strawberry flavour.
Orange-flower water
Adds a floral aroma that complements the strawberries.

The step that matters

Dissolving the sugar fully. Sugar dissolves slowly in cold liquid, so stirring until no crystals remain is important. Undissolved sugar leaves a grainy texture and uneven sweetness in the finished sherbet.

“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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