Why it works: Sugar and lemon are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 18% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 53,532 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓
Sherbet
Ingredients
Directions
Prepare the powder
Mix the powdered sugar, carbonate of soda, and tartaric acid in a bottle.
Serve
When ready to serve, mix 1 teaspoon of the powder in a tumbler of cold water.
Add a drop of essence of lemon to the mixture.
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.
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Sugar + lemontop 18% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together53,532 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
- Powdered white sugar
- Provides sweetness and bulk to the powder, balancing the sour taste of the acid.
- Carbonate of soda
- Reacts with tartaric acid in water to release carbon dioxide, making the drink fizz.
- Tartaric acid
- Provides sourness and reacts with carbonate of soda to produce the fizzing.
The step that matters
Mixing the powder into water at serving time. The fizz comes from carbonate of soda and tartaric acid reacting in water to release carbon dioxide. The powder should be stirred into the water just before serving, because the gas escapes quickly and the drink goes flat if it waits.
“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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