sherbet

• Flying saucers: these were small circular things made of rice paper filled with sherbet, shaped roughly like the UFOs of popular mythology. Coming in a variety of lurid colours, you would place a saucer on your tongue and wait for the rice paper to dissolve, whereupon you'd be rewarded with the tingly taste sensation of sherbet melting across your taste buds. Wonderful.
• Sherbet dibdabs: a small paper bag of sherbet accompanied by a bright red lollipop: the technique here was to lick the lolly, then dip it into the sherbet which you could then lick off. Repeat until fade.
• Sherbet fountains: a similar concept to the sherbet dibdab but instead of a delicious-tasting lollipop these were accompanied by a hideous hunk of black goo. I firmly resist any claims that licorice is at all edible and so can't give any more information about these so-called sweets.

I believe that in much of the USA sherbet is some kind of drink: if anyone knows what the US term for this fizzy powder is I'd be interested.

Sylvar says In the US, sherbet is very bad sorbet. The only thing similar to UK sherbet, as far as I know, is "Lik-m-Aid" (Wonka's Fun Dip). The powder doesn't have its own name here, though.

• 7 tbsp of icing sugar
• 3 tbsp of citric acid
• 1 tbsp of bicarbonate of soda

Sher"bet (?), n. [Ar. sherbet, shorbet, sharbat, properly, one drink or sip, a draught, beverage, from shariba to drink. Cf. Sorbet, Sirup, Shrub a drink.]

1.

A refreshing drink, common in the East, made of the juice of some fruit, diluted, sweetened, and flavored in various ways; as, orange sherbet; lemon sherbet; raspberry sherbet, etc.

2.

A flavored water ice.

3.

A preparation of bicarbonate of soda, tartaric acid, sugar, etc., variously flavored, for making an effervescing drink; -- called also sherbet powder.

© Webster 1913.