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Dessert

Lemon Sherbet

A chilled lemon dessert made with lemon juice, sugar, water, egg whites, and cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Lemon Sherbet

Why it works: Sugar and cream are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 43,450 recipes. Both carry 2,3-butanedione, which smells butter, sweet. The science ↓

Lemon Sherbet

Ingredients

Directions

Make the lemon base

  1. Boil 2 quarts of water and pour it over the rinds of the lemons.

  2. Stir the boiling water into the sugar and lemon juice until dissolved.

Combine with egg whites

  1. Beat the egg whites to stiff peaks.

  2. Combine the mixture with the beaten egg whites and pour it into a freezer.

Freeze

  1. When slightly frozen, add 1 pint of cream and stir well.

  2. Continue to freeze until fully set.

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 + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

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

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

  5. Egg + creamtop 24% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together42,166 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

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

Lemon juice
Provides the sharp citrus acidity and bright lemon flavor.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and keeps the frozen sherbet softer and less icy.
Egg whites
Whipped to stiff peaks, they trap air, giving the sherbet a light, airy texture.
Cream
Adds fat, which makes the sherbet smoother and creamier on the palate.

The step that matters

Adding the cream while slightly frozen. A partly frozen mixture is slushy, so the cream disperses evenly. If the base is fully frozen, the cream stays in icy lumps instead of blending smoothly.

Swap the lemon

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

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

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