Skip to main content
Dessert

Ginger Mint Sherbet

A chilled fruit sherbet made with mint, citrus, ginger, egg whites, and whipped cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Lemon and orange match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 10,634 recipes. Both carry 3-hexenal, which smells apple, fruity. The science ↓

Ginger Mint Sherbet

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the syrup

  1. Grate the rind from 2 lemons and set aside.

  2. Slice the oranges and lemons very thin, removing seeds, and add to the mint leaves in an earthen pitcher.

  3. Boil the sugar and water together for 5 minutes after boiling starts.

  4. Remove from heat and pour the syrup over the fruit and mint.

Cool and freeze

  1. Place the pitcher in a pan of ice water to cool.

  2. Once cool, strain the mixture into a freezer.

  3. Add the ground ginger, stiffly beaten egg whites, and whipped cream.

Serve

  1. Serve in sherbet glasses with a sprig of mint in each glass.

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. Lemon + orangetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,634 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  2. Mint + lemontop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,998 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  3. Orange + gingertop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,833 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

  4. Lemon + gingertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,154 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  5. Mint + gingertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together647 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

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

What each ingredient does

Egg whites
Stiffly beaten whites add air and a light, fluffy texture to the frozen sherbet.
Heavy cream
Whipped cream adds fat and richness, giving the sherbet a smoother, creamier texture.
Sugar
Sugar sweetens the syrup and keeps the frozen sherbet softer by lowering its freezing point.
Lemons
Lemon juice and rind add acidity and bright citrus aroma that balance the sweetness.
Preserved ginger root
Ground ginger adds a warm, spicy flavor that stands out against the citrus and mint.

The step that matters

Cooling the fruit syrup before freezing. Pouring hot syrup over the fruit and freezing it too soon can cook the mint and citrus flavors and leave the texture icy. Cooling it fully in ice water keeps the flavors fresh and helps the mixture freeze smoothly.

Swap the mint

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

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Cardamomfits better
  3. Nutmegfits better
  4. Mintthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against lemon, orange, sugar, egg, cream, ginger. 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

Orange Bundt CakeOrange Bundt Cake349 recipesLemon CakeLemon Cake228 recipesGinger CookiesGinger Cookies213 recipesLemon IceLemon Ice147 recipes