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Dessert

Lemon Ginger Sherbet

A frozen dessert made from lemon juice, candied ginger, sugar, water, and egg white.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and ginger match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,154 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Lemon Ginger Sherbet

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the lemons

  1. Spread part of the sugar on a shallow plate.

  2. Wipe the lemons with a clean damp cloth and roll them in the sugar to extract the oil.

  3. Cut the lemons in half, remove the seeds, and squeeze out the juice.

Make the sherbet

  1. Boil the sugar, ginger, and water together until clear, removing the scum as it rises.

  2. Add the lemon juice to the syrup, strain it, and gradually pour it into the beaten egg white.

  3. Freeze the mixture.

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 + gingertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,154 recipes

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

  2. Ginger + sugartop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together14,054 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-penten-3-one (fish, pungent).

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

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

  4. Lemon + eggtop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together44,316 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,e)-2,4-decadienal (fatty, deep fried).

  5. Egg + sugartop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 recipes

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

Ginger and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 14,054 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

Sugar
Sweetens the sherbet and forms the syrup that sets the texture when frozen.
Lemons
Provide acidity and aroma; rolling them in sugar draws out the fragrant peel oil.
Egg white
Beaten to foam, it adds lightness and airy structure to the frozen mixture.
Candied ginger
Adds spicy aroma and flavour that carries through the boiled syrup.

The step that matters

Pouring the syrup into the beaten egg white. Pour the syrup gradually while the white is beaten. Adding it too fast can deflate the foam, and the airy structure that keeps the frozen sherbet light depends on it.

Swap the ginger

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

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Nutmegfits better
  3. Dillfits about as well
  4. Gingerthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against lemon, egg, sugar. 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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