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Drink

Turkish Sherbet

A sweet, lemony dessert drink made from veal broth, sugar syrup, and egg white.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Turkish Sherbet

Why it works: Sugar and syrup match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,842 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓

Turkish Sherbet

Ingredients

Directions

Make the broth

  1. Wash the veal and place it in a pot with 9 pints of water.

  2. Skim the surface and boil until reduced to 2 pints.

  3. Strain the broth through a sieve and let it cool.

Make the syrup

  1. In a separate pot, dissolve 2 pounds of sugar in 1½ pints of water to make a syrup.

  2. Clear the syrup with the egg white.

Combine and serve

  1. Combine the cooled broth with the lemon juice and syrup.

  2. Serve in glass mugs as a dessert or refreshment.

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. Sugar + syruptop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,842 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  2. Veal + lemontop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together4,580 recipes

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

  3. Lemon + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

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

  4. Lemon + eggtop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together44,316 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,e)-2,4-decadienal (fatty, deep fried).

  5. Lemon + syruptop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,235 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

Lemon and sugar 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

Veal
Simmered into a flavourful broth that forms the base of the drink.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that gives the drink its tart, refreshing character.
Loaf sugar
Dissolved into syrup to provide sweetness and body.
Egg white
Binds to impurities in the syrup so they can be removed, clearing it.

The step that matters

Clear the syrup with the egg white. Egg white proteins coagulate when heated and trap suspended impurities, which rise as a foam that is skimmed off. Stirring it in poorly or boiling too hard can leave the syrup cloudy or cause it to break up.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Lemonthe original
  2. Vanillafits about as well
  3. Raisinfits less well
  4. Peachfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against veal, sugar, syrup, 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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