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Dessert

Mint Sherbet

Mint Sherbet is a chilled mint-flavored beverage made with mint, lemon, sugar, water, orange juice, and Curacao.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 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 ↓

Mint Sherbet

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the mint

  1. Macerate the mint leaves and add the lemon juice.

  2. Cover and let stand for 15 minutes.

Make the syrup

  1. In a saucepan, combine the sugar and water.

  2. Heat over medium until the sugar dissolves, then cook until it threads.

Combine and freeze

  1. Remove from heat and add the orange juice and the prepared lemon mixture.

  2. Let the mixture cool, then strain and add Curacao to taste.

  3. Freeze the mixture and serve in sherbet 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. Lemon + orangetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,634 recipes

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

  2. Mint + lemontop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,998 recipes

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

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

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

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

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

  5. Sugar + orangetop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together19,212 recipes

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

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

Fresh mint leaves
Provides the main aromatic flavour of the sherbet.
Lemons
Add acidity that balances the sugar and brightens the flavour.
Sugar
Sweetens the sherbet and lowers the freezing point for a softer texture.
Orange juice
Adds sweetness and fruity flavour along with extra liquid.

The step that matters

Cooking the sugar syrup until it threads. Sugar cooked to the threading stage has a set concentration; cooking too little leaves the sherbet icy and cooking too far can make it grainy or crystallised when frozen.

Swap the mint

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

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Gingerfits better
  3. Peppermintfits better
  4. Mintthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against 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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