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Ginger Sherbet

A chilled ginger and fruit syrup made by steeping ginger, raisins, and lemon rind, then sweetening with sugar and ginger liquor.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and orange match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 10,634 recipes. Both carry 3-hexenal, which smells apple, fruity. The science ↓

Ginger Sherbet

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the infusion

  1. Bruise the ginger and place it in an earthen vessel with the raisins and lemon rind.

  2. Pour boiling water over the mixture, cover, and let it sit overnight.

  3. Carefully pour off the clear liquid and strain it through a fine sieve.

Make the sherbet

  1. In a pan, combine the sugar, lemon juice, orange juice, and ½ pint of ginger liquor; stir until the sugar dissolves.

  2. Heat the mixture until it boils, then simmer until clear, skimming as needed.

  3. Add the remaining ginger liquor and boil for 10 minutes.

  4. Strain through muslin and bottle when cold.

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. Lemon + orangetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,634 recipes

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

  2. Ginger + orangetop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,833 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

  3. Ginger + lemontop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,154 recipes

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

  4. Ginger + raisintop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,242 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Raisin + orangetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,684 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

White ginger
Provides the main aromatic flavour and spice of the sherbet.
Raisins
Add sweetness and body to the infused liquid as they steep.
Broken loaf sugar
Sweetens the syrup and helps set the sherbet's body when boiled.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the flavour and balances the sugar.
Orange juice
Contributes fruity sweetness and acidity to the syrup.

The step that matters

Simmer until clear, skimming as needed. Boiling sugar syrup throws foam and impurities to the surface. Skimming them off keeps the sherbet clear and clean-tasting, and gentle simmering avoids scorching the sugar.

Swap the raisin

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (ginger, lemon, sugar, orange):

  1. Limefits better
  2. Mangofits better
  3. Blackberryfits better
  4. Raisinthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against ginger, lemon, sugar, orange. 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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