Skip to main content
Dessert

Lemon Sherbet

A chilled milk-based lemon dessert made with lemon rind, milk, sugar, egg whites, and lemon juice.

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

Why it works: Lemon and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 15% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 19,053 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Lemon Sherbet

Ingredients

Directions

Make the milk base

  1. Boil the sliced yellow rind of 1 lemon in 1 quart of milk with 1 cup of sugar.

  2. Remove the rind and cool the mixture.

  3. Add the well-beaten whites of 4 eggs.

Add the lemon and freeze

  1. Partially freeze the mixture.

  2. Squeeze the juice of 4 lemons over a heaped cup of sugar.

  3. Strain the mixture.

  4. Add the strained juice to the half-frozen mixture.

  5. Finish freezing 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.

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. Lemon + milktop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,053 recipes

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

  2. Lemon + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

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

  3. Milk + eggtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together88,785 recipes

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

  4. Milk + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together77,875 recipes

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

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

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

Lemon and sugar 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

Milk
Forms the creamy body of the sherbet and carries the sweetness and milk proteins.
Egg whites
Their proteins add lightness and help give the frozen sherbet a smooth, airy texture.
Lemon juice
Adds sharp acidity that balances the sugar and brightens the flavour.
Sugar
Sweetens the dish and lowers the freezing point, keeping the texture soft rather than icy.

The step that matters

Adding the juice to the half-frozen mixture. Acidic juice added to a fully liquid base can curdle the milk. Partially freezing first gives the mixture enough body to stay smooth when the juice goes in.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Figfits about as well
  3. Raisinfits about as well
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, 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.

You might also like

Lemon CakeLemon Cake228 recipesLemon IceLemon Ice147 recipesLemon CustardLemon Custard64 recipesLemon Water IceLemon Water Ice55 recipes