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Dessert

Pineapple Sherbert

A frozen dessert made with pineapple, lemon juice, sugar, water, gelatin, and egg whites.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Pineapple and lemon are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,964 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Pineapple Sherbert

Ingredients

Directions

Make the syrup and base

  1. Boil sugar and 1 quart water until thick syrup forms.

  2. Mix grated pineapple and lemon juice with 1 pint water.

  3. Pour boiling syrup over the mixture.

  4. Strain the mixture.

Add gelatine and churn

  1. Soak gelatin in cold water until soft, then dissolve with a little hot water.

  2. Add dissolved gelatin to the mixture after it cools.

  3. Pour into a freezer and churn until it starts to harden.

  4. Fold in beaten egg whites.

Freeze and rest

  1. Freeze hard.

  2. If possible, let it stand for 2-3 hours before serving.

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. Pineapple + lemontop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,964 recipes

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

  2. Sugar + lemontop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

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

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

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

  4. Sugar + pineappletop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together4,841 recipes

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

  5. Sugar + eggtop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 recipes

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

Sugar and lemon 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

Egg whites
Beaten and folded in, they add a light, airy texture to the frozen mixture.
Coxe's gelatine
Sets the mixture so the sherbet holds its shape and resists melting too quickly.
Sugar
Sweetens the base and helps keep the frozen texture softer and smoother.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that balances the sweetness and brightens the pineapple flavour.

The step that matters

Add the dissolved gelatine after the mixture cools. Gelatine that meets a hot mixture can clump or set unevenly, so cooling the base first helps it disperse and set smoothly.

Swap the pineapple

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

  1. Orangefits better
  2. Vanillafits better
  3. Limefits better
  4. Pineapplethe original

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