Skip to main content
Dessert

Sorbet Au Mocha

A chilled dessert made from lemon juice, coffee, egg whites, kirschwasser, and cream, sweetened with sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Sugar and cream are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 43,450 recipes. Both carry 2,3-butanedione, which smells butter, sweet. The science ↓

Sorbet Au Mocha

Ingredients

Directions

Make the syrup

  1. Rub the loaf sugar on the lemons to extract some zest.

  2. Put the sugar into a copper pan with 2 cups of water and boil to a syrup.

  3. Remove the scum, then add the strained juice of the lemons and the coffee.

Freeze and finish

  1. Freeze this mixture in the usual manner.

  2. Stir in the stiffly whisked egg whites, kirschwasser, and cream.

Serve

  1. Serve the mixture when three-quarters frozen in small 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. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

  2. Coffee + creamtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,339 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-heptanol (bitter, floral).

  3. Sugar + coffeetop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together4,344 recipes

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

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

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

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

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

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

Egg whites
Whisked whites trap air, giving the frozen sorbet a lighter, less dense texture.
Loaf sugar
Sweetens the mixture and lowers its freezing point, keeping the sorbet soft rather than rock-hard.
Lemons
Provide acidity and fragrant zest that brighten the coffee and cream flavours.
Cream
Adds richness and fat, making the frozen texture smoother and creamier.
Strong coffee
Supplies the main mocha flavour and a slightly bitter depth against the sweetness.
Kirschwasser
Adds a cherry-like aroma that lifts the overall flavour.

The step that matters

Stir in the stiffly whisked egg whites. Whisked egg whites hold air bubbles that give a light texture. Overmixing or letting the mixture melt too far before stirring can deflate the foam and make the sorbet dense.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Raisinfits better
  3. Strawberryfits better
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, egg, coffee, cream. 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.

You might also like

Lemon CakeLemon Cake228 recipesLemon IceLemon Ice147 recipesLemon SherbetLemon Sherbet103 recipesCoffee Ice CreamCoffee Ice Cream91 recipes