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Raspberry and Currant Sherbet

A chilled sweet beverage made from currant and raspberry juice, sugar, water, and isinglass.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Currant and raspberry work together. They rank in the top 10% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 366 recipes. Both carry ethyl benzoate, which smells fruity, sweet. The science ↓

Raspberry and Currant Sherbet

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the juice

  1. Strain the currant and raspberry juices into a large bowl.

  2. Add the broken loaf sugar and cold water. Stir until the sugar dissolves.

  3. Cover and let it sit overnight.

Clear and age

  1. Dissolve the isinglass in the half pint of water.

  2. Clear the mixture into a large stone jar. Add the dissolved isinglass.

  3. Seal the jar to exclude air. Store the jar in a cool place.

  4. After three weeks, clear the mixture into bottles.

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. Currant + raspberrytop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together366 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl benzoate (fruity, sweet).

  2. Raspberry + sugartop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3,101 recipes

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

  3. Currant + sugartop 26% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together12,256 recipes

Currant and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 12,256 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

Currant juice
Provides the main tart flavour and bright colour of the sherbet.
Raspberry juice
Adds fruity aroma, sweetness and colour to the drink.
Loaf sugar
Sweetens the drink and balances the acidity of the fruit juices.
Isinglass
A fining agent that helps the mixture clear by binding suspended particles for settling.

The step that matters

Sealing the jar to exclude air. Air lets oxygen and microbes reach the liquid, which can spoil its flavour and cause fermentation. A tightly sealed jar keeps the sherbet stable while it clears and ages.

Swap the currant

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Peachfits better
  3. Red currantfits better
  4. Currantthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against raspberry, sugar. 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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