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Dessert

Plum Sherbet

A frozen dessert made from plum puree, water, powdered sugar, egg white, and citric acid.

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 ↓

Plum Sherbet

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the fruit

  1. Remove the seeds from the plums.

  2. Press the plum fruit through a fine sieve.

Mix and freeze

  1. Combine the plum puree with water, powdered sugar, and egg white.

  2. Add the citric acid solution.

  3. Strain everything through the sieve into your freezer.

  4. Freeze 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.

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).

  2. Sugar + plumtop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,313 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-penten-3-one (fish, pungent).

  3. Egg + plumtop 30% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together794 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

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

What each ingredient does

Plums
Provide the main fruit flavor and the puree that gives the sherbet its body.
Powdered sugar
Adds sweetness and keeps the frozen sherbet softer by lowering its freezing point.
Citric acid solution
Adds acidity that brightens the fruit flavor and balances the sweetness.

The step that matters

Strain everything through the sieve before freezing. Straining removes pulp, skins and seed fragments so the frozen sherbet is smooth rather than grainy. Mixing the sugar and acid in first helps the sugar dissolve so the texture stays even as it freezes.

Swap the plum

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Raisinfits better
  3. Lemonfits better
  4. Plumthe original

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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