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Drink

Mint Sherbet

Mint Sherbet is a chilled mint-flavored beverage made with mint, water, sugar, orange and pineapple juices, coconut milk, egg whites, and optional maraschino.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Pineapple and coconut match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 651 recipes. Both carry delta-dodecalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Mint Sherbet

Ingredients

Directions

Make the mint syrup

  1. Bruise the mint in a mortar and add boiling water.

  2. Let steep for 20 minutes.

  3. Strain carefully.

  4. Boil the mint water with sugar for 10 minutes.

  5. Remove from heat.

Freeze the sherbet

  1. Add the orange juice, pineapple juice, and coconut milk (if using).

  2. Pour the mixture into a freezer.

  3. When half frozen, add the beaten egg whites and green maraschino (if using).

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. Pineapple + coconuttop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together651 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  2. Orange + pineappletop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,664 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl isobutyrate (fruity, ethereal).

  3. Mint + pineappletop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together182 recipes

    Shared aroma: myrcene (balsamic, herbaceous).

  4. Mint + orangetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together549 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  5. Milk + coconuttop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,648 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

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

What each ingredient does

Egg whites
Beaten whites add airy lightness to the partly frozen mixture.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and keeps the frozen mixture softer and less icy.
Orange juice
Brings bright acidity and citrus flavour to the sherbet.
Mint
Provides the main aromatic flavour, infused into the water.

The step that matters

When half frozen, add the beaten egg whites. Adding the whites too early, or when fully frozen, prevents them from folding in evenly and giving the sherbet an airy texture. Partly frozen mixture is slushy enough to hold the foam without collapsing.

Swap the coconut

The recipe marks coconut as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (mint, sugar, orange, pineapple, milk, egg):

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Lemonfits better
  3. Figfits better
  4. Coconutthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against mint, sugar, orange, pineapple, milk, 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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