Skip to main content
Dessert

Apple Sherbet

A frozen dessert made from boiled apples, sugar, and citrus juices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Lemon and orange match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 10,634 recipes. Both carry 3-hexenal, which smells apple, fruity. The science ↓

Apple Sherbet

Ingredients

Directions

Make the syrup

  1. Boil the sugar and water for 5 minutes.

Cook and strain the apples

  1. Add the unpeeled, cored, and sliced apples, and cook until soft.

  2. Rub the mixture through a sieve.

Flavour and freeze

  1. When cold, add the orange juice, lemon juice, cherry juice, and a few drops of red color if desired.

  2. Freeze the mixture when it is quite cold.

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 + orangetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,634 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  2. Cherry + orangetop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together689 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-nonadienal (fatty, green).

  3. Apple + cherrytop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together295 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  4. Apple + orangetop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,230 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  5. Cherry + lemontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,301 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Apples
Provide the bulk, pectin, and tart flavour that give the sherbet its body and character.
Granulated sugar
Sweetens the mixture and lowers the freezing point, keeping the sherbet soft rather than rock-hard.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the flavour and balances the sweetness.
Orange juice
Adds citrus acidity and aroma while contributing sweetness and moisture.
Cherry juice
Adds moisture and a fruity flavour, and tints the sherbet.

The step that matters

Freeze when the mixture is quite cold. Adding the citrus and cherry juices to warm mixture or freezing it while warm can affect texture and flavour. Chilling first lets the sugar and fruit solids dissolve fully and helps the sherbet freeze into a smooth, even texture rather than large ice crystals.

Swap the apple

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Limefits better
  3. Cranberryfits better
  4. Applethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, cherry, lemon, orange. 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.

You might also like

Orange Bundt CakeOrange Bundt Cake349 recipesApple PuddingApple Pudding256 recipesLemon CakeLemon Cake228 recipesLemon IceLemon Ice147 recipes