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Dessert

Orange Sherbet

A chilled orange-flavored dessert made with water, sugar, orange rind, orange and lemon juice, gelatin, and egg yolks.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Orange Sherbet

Why it works: Orange and lemon 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 ↓

Orange Sherbet

Ingredients

Directions

Make the syrup

  1. Cook water and sugar for 20 minutes.

  2. Cool the mixture and add the grated rind of 1 orange.

Combine and freeze

  1. Beat the yolks of 4 eggs until light and add to the juice of the oranges and lemons.

  2. Dissolve gelatin in ½ cup cold water.

  3. Mix all ingredients together and freeze.

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. Orange + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,634 recipes

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

  2. Sugar + gelatintop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,778 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

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

  4. Sugar + orangetop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together19,212 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  5. Orange + gelatintop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together463 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-pinene (pine, resin).

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

Sugar
Adds sweetness and lowers the freezing point, keeping the sherbet softer and scoopable.
Orange juice
Provides the main orange flavor, sweetness and acidity.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the flavor and balances the sugar.
Gelatin
Helps bind water and limit large ice crystals, giving a smoother texture.
Orange rind
Adds aromatic orange oil flavor to the mixture.

The step that matters

Mix all ingredients together and freeze.. The mixture should be fully cooled before freezing. A warm base freezes slowly and forms larger ice crystals, which makes the sherbet grainy.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Lemonthe original
  3. Mangofits about as well
  4. Figfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, orange, gelatin. 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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