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Dessert

Lemon Sherbet

A chilled lemon dessert made with gelatin, sugar, lemon juice, rind, and water.

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

Why it works: Lemon and sugar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 18% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 53,532 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Lemon Sherbet

Ingredients

Directions

Make the mixture

  1. Soak the gelatin in a little cold water.

  2. Dissolve the soaked gelatin in boiling water.

  3. Mix the lemon juice with the sugar.

  4. Add the dissolved gelatin to the lemon-sugar mixture.

  5. Stir in the salt.

Freeze

  1. Strain the mixture into a freezer and freeze.

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

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

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

Gelatine
Sets the liquid into a smooth, firm body as it cools and freezes.
Sugar
Sweetens the mixture and softens its texture by lowering the freezing point.
Lemon juice
Provides the sharp acidity that defines the sherbet's flavour.

The step that matters

Dissolve the soaked gelatin in boiling water. Gelatine must be fully dissolved before it is mixed in, or it will form lumps and streaks instead of setting evenly through the sherbet.

“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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