A Sip of Şerbet — Ottoman Şerbets and How to Make Them

A sip of şerbet was the cooling drink of the Ottoman table. Born of fruit, flowers or spices meeting sweetened water, today it mostly turns up alongside desserts and on special occasions.

What is şerbet?

Şerbet is a drink made by boiling fruit juice, a flower essence or spices with sugar and water, then letting it cool. Its name comes from the Arabic root sharāb (drink); the words sorbet and sherbet, which made their way into European languages, share the same root.

What sets it apart from fruit juice is that it is cooked with sugar and often contains spices. That is why its flavour is more intense and its aroma more pronounced.

Şerbet in Ottoman cuisine

Şerbet was indispensable in the kitchens of palaces and mansions. There were dozens of kinds, among them rose, violet, tamarind, sour cherry, pomegranate, clove and ginger. In the summer months it was chilled with snow and offered to guests.

Some kinds tied to particular occasions still live on today, such as lohusa şerbeti (red in colour and flavoured with cloves), which is served after a birth.

How do you make a simple şerbet?

1. Bring the water and sugar to the boil (roughly 1.5–2 cups of sugar to 1 litre of water).
2. Once it comes to the boil, add the spice: cloves, a cinnamon stick or ginger.
3. If you’re using fruit (sour cherry, pomegranate, apricot), add it at this stage and simmer over a low heat for 10–15 minutes.
4. Take it off the heat, leave it to cool, then strain.
5. Chill it thoroughly in the fridge; lemon juice balances the flavour.

Şerbet tastes sweet while it’s hot and balances out as it cools — so only judge the flavour once it has cooled.

The şerbet that goes with dessert

With desserts such as baklava, kadayıf (shredded pastry) and revani (semolina sponge cake), the word “şerbet” means not a drink but the sugar syrup that soaks the dessert. There’s a well-known rule here: if one is hot, the other must be cold. Pour hot şerbet over a hot dessert and it turns soggy.

Where is it today?

As fizzy drinks spread, şerbet retreated from the everyday table, but it never disappeared completely: it still holds its place at Ramadan meals, at weddings and mevlüt recitals, and at breakfast in some regions. You’ll find recipes for syrup-soaked desserts in the Recipes section.