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Rhubarb Sherbet

A chilled rhubarb and sugar beverage made by boiling rhubarb with lemon rind and straining.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Rhubarb and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 546 recipes. Both carry acetic acid, which smells sour, vinegar. The science ↓

Rhubarb Sherbet

Oven, in the book's wordsA good oven

Ingredients

Directions

Cook the rhubarb

  1. Put the rhubarb in a clean pan and pour over the cold water.

  2. Add the lemon rind and boil for 20 minutes.

  3. Strain the mixture through muslin.

Sweeten and serve

  1. Stir in the sugar until dissolved.

  2. Serve 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. Rhubarb + lemontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together546 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

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

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

  3. Rhubarb + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,852 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-penten-3-one (fish, pungent).

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

Rhubarb
Provides the main tart flavour and colour once its juice is strained out.
Sugar
Balances the tartness and adds sweetness to the liquid.
Lemon rind
Adds aromatic citrus oils to the cooking liquid.

The step that matters

Stir in the sugar until dissolved. Sugar that is not fully dissolved leaves grains in the chilled liquid, making it gritty. Stirring until clear ensures the sugar is evenly distributed and fully sweetens the sherbet.

Swap the rhubarb

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

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Gingerfits better
  3. Marjoramfits better
  4. Rhubarbthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against lemon, 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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