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Dessert

Raspberry Sherbet

A chilled dessert made from raspberry juice, sugar syrup, lemon juice, gelatin, and egg whites.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Sugar and lemon 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 ↓

Raspberry Sherbet

Ingredients

Directions

Make the syrup

  1. Combine sugar and 1 cup of water in a saucepan; heat until sugar dissolves.

  2. Soak gelatin in a little cold water, then stir it into the hot syrup until dissolved; set aside to cool.

Prepare the raspberry juice

  1. Mash raspberries, pour remaining cup of water over them, and strain through cheesecloth.

  2. Add lemon juice to raspberry juice and mix with cooled syrup.

Finish

  1. Fold in well-beaten egg whites until combined; mixture is now ready to be frozen.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Raspberries
Provide the main flavour and colour, and their juice gives the sherbet its body.
Sugar
Sweetens the mixture and softens the texture by lowering the freezing point.
Knox's gelatine
Stabilises the mixture so it holds a smooth, less icy texture after freezing.
Lemons
Add acidity that brightens the raspberry flavour and balances the sweetness.
Egg whites
Whipped into foam, they lighten the texture and add airiness to the frozen mixture.

The step that matters

Fold in well-beaten egg whites. Egg whites must be beaten to stiff, stable foam and folded in gently so the mixture keeps its air. Overmixing deflates the foam and makes the sherbet denser.

Swap the lemon

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against 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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