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Dessert

Blackberry Sherbet

A frozen dessert made from blackberries, sugar, water, citric acid, and egg white.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Sugar and egg are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 21% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 122,807 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Blackberry Sherbet

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the base

  1. In a large bowl, combine water and sugar.

  2. Add citric acid solution and mix well.

  3. Press blackberries through a fine sieve into the sugar-water mixture.

  4. Strain the mixture through a sieve to remove seeds and pulp.

Freeze and finish

  1. Freeze the mixture until solid.

  2. Before serving, whip the egg white until frothy and fold it into the sherbet.

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Sugar
Sweetens the sherbet and lowers its freezing point so it stays scoopable.
Blackberries
Provide the main fruit flavor, color and acidity in the sherbet.
Citric acid solution
Adds tartness that brightens the blackberry flavor.
Egg white
Whipped and folded in, it adds air for a lighter, fluffier texture.

The step that matters

Freezing until solid. Sugar and water form a syrup that freezes slowly in a sherbet base, so the mixture should be frozen fully and checked before the egg white is folded in. Stirring the partly frozen mix helps keep ice crystals small and the texture smooth.

“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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