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Dessert

Apple Sherbet

A chilled apple dessert made with apples, cinnamon, nutmeg, lemon, sugar, and egg white.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Cinnamon and nutmeg match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,917 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Apple Sherbet

Ingredients

Directions

Make the apple base

  1. Select nice, bright-flavored apples.

  2. Cook apples with cinnamon bark, salt, and enough water to cover until very soft.

  3. Mash the mixture through a puree sieve.

  4. Add grated nutmeg, lemon juice, and sweeten to taste.

Freeze

  1. Freeze the mixture, adding the beaten egg white.

  2. Optionally, add small pieces of preserved ginger with the egg white.

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. Cinnamon + nutmegtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,917 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Cinnamon + gingertop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,380 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  3. Apple + cinnamontop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,598 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyl cinnamate (strawberry).

  4. Lemon + gingertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,154 recipes

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

  5. Nutmeg + gingertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,324 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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

What each ingredient does

Apples
Provide the main flavor and, once cooked and pureed, the body of the sherbet.
Beaten egg white
Adds air and a lighter, smoother texture to the frozen mixture.
Sugar
Sweetens the apple base and softens the texture of the frozen sherbet.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the apple flavor.

The step that matters

Mashing the cooked apples through a puree sieve. Cooking until very soft and pressing the pulp through a sieve removes lumps and fibrous bits, giving the smooth texture that defines a sherbet.

Swap the ginger

The recipe marks ginger as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (apple, cinnamon, nutmeg, lemon, sugar, egg):

  1. Cardamomfits better
  2. Clovefits better
  3. Allspicefits about as well
  4. Gingerthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against apple, cinnamon, nutmeg, lemon, 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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