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Dessert

Kirschenwasser Sorbet

A chilled sorbet made from syrup, Chablis, Kirschenwasser, lemon juice, bay salt, pounded ice, and rum.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Syrup and rum work together. They rank in the top 17% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 367 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓

Kirschenwasser Sorbet

Ingredients

Directions

Make the first sorbet

  1. Mix the syrup and Chablis.

  2. Strain the mixture through a silk sieve into a freezer.

  3. Beat well with a spoon until sufficiently frozen.

  4. Add Kirschenwasser and stir.

  5. Serve in glasses.

Make the second sorbet

  1. For the second method, mix lemon juice, syrup, and Chablis.

  2. Strain the mixture through a silk sieve.

  3. Place the strained mixture in a freezing pail surrounded by bay salt and pounded ice.

  4. Stir until well frozen.

  5. Stir in rum.

  6. Serve in glasses.

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. Syrup + rumtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together367 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  2. Lemon + rumtop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,341 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).

  3. Syrup + lemontop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,235 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

What each ingredient does

Syrup
Sweetens the sorbet and, at this strength, helps keep it soft rather than rock-hard.
Chablis
Adds wine flavour and acidity, and its water content forms the frozen base.
Kirschenwasser
Adds a concentrated cherry aroma that carries through the frozen base.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the flavour and balances the sweetness of the syrup.

The step that matters

Beat or stir until sufficiently frozen. Sorbet freezes into ice crystals as it chills, and stirring or beating breaks them up while it sets. Stopping too early leaves it icy and coarse, while over-freezing makes it hard and difficult to serve.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (syrup, rum):

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Pineapplefits better
  3. Bananafits better
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against syrup, rum. 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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