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Dessert

Buford Sherbet

A frozen dessert made with water, sugar, raisins, figs, cinnamon, cloves, oranges, lemon, and port wine.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Cinnamon and clove match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,189 recipes. Both carry ethyl cinnamate, which smells sweet, balsamic. The science ↓

Buford Sherbet

Ingredients

Directions

Make the syrup

  1. Boil water and sugar together to make a syrup.

Steep the fruit

  1. Finely chop the raisins and figs, and place them in an earthen bowl.

  2. Pour the boiling syrup over the chopped fruits and let it stand until cold.

Finish and freeze

  1. Remove the cinnamon and cloves, then add the oranges, lemon, and port wine to the syrup and fruit mixture.

  2. Freeze the mixture until solid.

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. Cinnamon + clovetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,189 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  2. Orange + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,634 recipes

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

  3. Raisin + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,390 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

  4. Cinnamon + orangetop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,437 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  5. Fig + cinnamontop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together614 recipes

    Shared aroma: cinnamyl acetate (sweet aromatic, cinnamon).

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

What each ingredient does

Sugar
Dissolves into the water to form a syrup that sweetens the sherbet and lowers its freezing point.
Raisins
Add sweetness and body, softening in the hot syrup as they steep.
Figs
Add sweetness and a soft, thick texture when finely chopped and steeped.
Port wine
Adds alcohol, which keeps the frozen mixture softer and adds aroma and sweetness.
Lemon
Adds acidity that brightens the sweetness of the syrup and fruit.

The step that matters

Freezing until solid. Sugar and alcohol lower the freezing point, so the mixture freezes slowly and unevenly. Freezing it fully solid and not stopping early keeps the texture firm and consistent.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sugar, raisin, fig, cinnamon, clove, orange, port wine):

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Applefits better
  3. Pearfits better
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, raisin, fig, cinnamon, clove, orange, port wine. 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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