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Dessert

Crimson Sherbet

A frozen strawberry and lemon sherbet made with juice, sugar, water, and optional egg white.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Strawberry and lemon are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 15% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,206 recipes. Both carry 3-hexenal, which smells apple, fruity. The science ↓

Crimson Sherbet

Ingredients

Directions

Make the syrup

  1. Combine cold water and sugar in a pot.

  2. Boil the mixture for 5 minutes.

  3. Remove the pot from heat.

  4. Let the mixture cool.

Add the juices and freeze

  1. Add strawberry juice and lemon juice to the mixture.

  2. Strain the mixture through a jelly bag.

  3. Pour the strained mixture into a freezer container.

  4. Freeze the mixture.

  5. Once frozen, remove the mixture from the freezer.

Finish and pack

  1. Pack the frozen sherbet until ready to serve.

  2. If desired, beat the egg white until stiff.

  3. Mix the beaten egg white with 1 cup of sugar.

  4. Add the egg white mixture after freezing before packing.

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. Strawberry + lemontop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,206 recipes

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

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

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

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

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

  4. Strawberry + sugartop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3,060 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  5. Sugar + eggtop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 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

Strawberry juice
Provides the main fruit flavour and pink colour.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the sweetness and sharpens the fruit flavour.
Granulated sugar
Sweetens the mixture and keeps the frozen sherbet softer by lowering its freezing point.
Egg white
Optional; when beaten to stiff foam it adds lightness to the frozen texture.

The step that matters

Let the mixture cool before adding the juices. Adding fruit and lemon juice to a hot syrup can dull fresh flavour and colour and makes the mixture freeze unevenly. Cooling first keeps the strawberry taste bright and lets the sherbet set smoothly.

Swap the strawberry

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against lemon, 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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