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Dessert

Apple Sherbet

A frozen dessert made from apples, lemon, sugar, water, and egg whites.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and apple are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 14% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 7,551 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Apple Sherbet

Ingredients

Directions

Make the syrup

  1. Combine sugar, cold water, and grated lemon rind in a pot.

  2. Bring the mixture to a boil.

  3. Peel and core the apples.

  4. Add the apples to the syrup.

  5. Cook until the apples are very soft.

Finish and freeze

  1. Mash the cooked apples through a fine sieve.

  2. Stir in the lemon juice.

  3. Let the mixture cool completely.

  4. Fold in the beaten egg whites.

  5. Freeze the mixture as you would for Cherry Sherbet.

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. Lemon + appletop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,551 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  2. Sugar + appletop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together16,478 recipes

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Sugar and apple barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 16,478 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

Apples
Provide the main fruit body and pectin that give the sherbet its body and flavor.
Sugar
Sweetens the syrup and lowers the freezing point so the sherbet stays scoopable.
Egg whites
Beaten and folded in to add air and a lighter, fluffier texture.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the apple flavor and balances the sweetness.

The step that matters

Cook until the apples are very soft. Apples that are not fully softened will not mash smoothly through the sieve, leaving a grainy texture in the finished sherbet.

Swap the apple

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, lemon, 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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