Skip to main content
Dessert

Currant Sherbet

A frozen dessert made from currant juice, water, sugar, gelatin, lemon juice, and a pinch of salt.

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

Why it works: Sugar and gelatin are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,778 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓

Currant Sherbet

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the gelatin

  1. Soak the gelatin in cold water for 30 minutes to cover it.

  2. Dissolve the soaked gelatin in ½ cup boiling water.

Mix and freeze

  1. In a bowl, mix the dissolved gelatin with the currant juice, water, sugar, salt, and lemon juice.

  2. Freeze the mixture 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.

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. Sugar + gelatintop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,778 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  2. Sugar + lemontop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

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

  3. Currant + lemontop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together4,270 recipes

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

  4. Currant + sugartop 26% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together12,256 recipes
  5. Gelatin + lemontop 27% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,215 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-pinene (pine, resin).

Sugar and lemon 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

Gelatin
Sets the mixture and gives the sherbet a firmer, smoother body as it freezes.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and softens the frozen texture by lowering the freezing point.
Currant juice
Provides the main fruit flavour and colour.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the flavour and balances the sweetness.

The step that matters

Dissolve the soaked gelatin in boiling water. Gelatin only sets evenly when it is fully dissolved. Undissolved granules or lumps leave a gritty, uneven texture in the frozen sherbet.

Swap the currant

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

  1. Orangefits better
  2. Vanillafits better
  3. Limefits better
  4. Currantthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, gelatin, lemon. 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