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Strawberry, Raspberry and Currant Sherbets

A frozen dessert made from strawberry, raspberry and currant juice with lemon, sugar syrup and egg white.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and sugar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 18% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 53,532 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Strawberry, Raspberry and Currant Sherbets

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the juice

  1. Heat the berries in a little hot water for about 5 minutes.

  2. Squeeze the berries through cheesecloth to extract the juice.

  3. To every pint of juice, add the juice of 1 lemon.

Make the syrup

  1. Boil 2 cups of water and 1½ cups of sugar together for 10 minutes.

Freeze

  1. Add the sugar syrup to the berry juices and freeze.

  2. Add the egg white just before the mixture is fully frozen.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Lemon and sugar 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

Berries
Provide the main flavour and colour, and the juice that forms the sherbet base.
Sugar
Sweetens the base and keeps the frozen mixture softer and less icy.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the berry flavour and balances the sweetness.
Egg white
Whipped into the partly frozen mixture to add lightness and a smoother, airier texture.

The step that matters

Add the egg white just before the mixture is fully frozen. Adding the egg white too early or too late changes the texture. Added while the mixture is still slushy, it blends in and helps trap air, giving a lighter, smoother sherbet. If the mixture is already solid, the white cannot be worked in evenly.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Raisinfits about as well
  3. Lemonthe original
  4. Datesfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, 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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