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
Prepare
Grate the yellow rind of the lemons.
Crush the sugar to a powder.
Make the sherbet
In a saucepan, combine the sugar and water, and simmer gently until the sugar dissolves.
Let the mixture cool, then add the strained lemon juice.
Remove the lemon rind and serve the sherbet in glasses.
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.
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Lemon + sugartop 18% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked 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
- Sugar
- Sweetens the sherbet and dissolves into the water to form a syrup.
- Lemons
- Supply the juice for tartness and the rind for aroma.
- Water
- Dissolves the sugar and dilutes the lemon juice into a drinkable liquid.
The step that matters
Dissolving the sugar fully. Simmering gently until the sugar dissolves makes a clear syrup. Undissolved sugar grains leave a gritty texture, and boiling hard can change the flavor and reduce the water too quickly.
“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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