Skip to main content
Dessert

Currant Sherbet

A chilled dessert made from mashed currants, raspberries, rock candy syrup, lemon juice, and egg whites.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓
Currant Sherbet

Why it works: Red currant and lemon work together. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 309 recipes. Both carry alpha-pinene, which smells pine, turpentine. The science ↓

Currant Sherbet

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the fruit

  1. Mash the red currants and red raspberries together.

Make the syrup base

  1. Add the rock candy syrup and place the mixture on the fire.

  2. Bring to a gentle boil.

  3. Add the juice of the lemons and strain through a fine sieve.

Finish and freeze

  1. Incorporate the egg whites and 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.

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. Red currant + lemontop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together309 recipes

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

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

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

  3. Syrup + lemontop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,235 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  4. Red currant + syruptop 26% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together76 recipes
  5. Red currant + eggtop 28% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together345 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

Lemon and egg barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 44,316 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

Red currants
Provide the tart, acidic flavour that defines the sherbet.
Red raspberries
Add fruity aroma and sweetness alongside the currants.
Rock candy syrup
Supplies sweetness and, once frozen, helps keep the texture smooth rather than icy.
Lemon juice
Adds extra acidity that brightens the fruit flavour.
Egg whites
Add foam and body, giving the frozen sherbet a lighter, creamier texture.

The step that matters

Incorporate the egg whites. Egg whites must be folded in gently once the base has cooled, so they hold air and lighten the texture. If the base is hot, the whites can cook or collapse, and the sherbet ends up dense and icy after freezing.

Swap the red currant

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

  1. Orangefits better
  2. Limefits better
  3. Vanillafits better
  4. Red currantthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against syrup, 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.

You might also like

Lemon CakeLemon Cake228 recipesLemon IceLemon Ice147 recipesLemon SherbetLemon Sherbet103 recipesRed Currant JellyRed Currant Jelly65 recipes