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Dessert

Currant Sherbet

A chilled currant dessert made with currant juice, water, sugar, gelatin, lemon juice, and salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Currant Sherbet

Why it works: Sugar and gelatin are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,778 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓

Currant Sherbet

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Soak the gelatin in cold water for 30 minutes to cover it.

  2. Dissolve the soaked gelatin in ½ cup of boiling water.

Make and freeze

  1. In a large bowl, mix the dissolved gelatin with the currant juice, 7 cups of cold water, sugar, salt, and lemon juice.

  2. Freeze the mixture until solid.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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. Sugar + gelatintop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,778 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

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

  3. Currant + lemontop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together4,270 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).

  4. Currant + sugartop 26% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together12,256 recipes
  5. Gelatin + lemontop 27% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,215 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-pinene (pine, resin).

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

Gelatin
Sets the liquid into a firm, smooth frozen texture rather than hard ice crystals.
Sugar
Sweetens the sherbet and softens its frozen texture so it is less icy.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the flavor and balances the sweetness of the currant juice.
Currant juice
Provides the main fruit flavor and color of the sherbet.

The step that matters

Dissolve the gelatin fully. Gelatin must be completely dissolved in hot water before mixing, or undissolved specks will remain and the sherbet will set unevenly with a rubbery texture.

Swap the currant

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

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

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