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Pineapple Sherbet

A chilled pineapple dessert made with lemon juice, sugar, gelatin, and water.

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

Why it works: Pineapple and lemon are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,964 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Pineapple Sherbet

one gallon

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Squeeze the juice from the lemons.

  2. Pour boiling water over the lemon rinds to cover them and soak for five minutes.

  3. Strain off the water and add the gelatine to it, stirring until dissolved.

Mix and freeze

  1. Add the lemon juice, sugar, and pineapple to the mixture.

  2. Add enough water to make one gallon, then 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. Pineapple + lemontop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,964 recipes

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

  2. Lemon + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

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

  3. Pineapple + sugartop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together4,841 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

Gelatine
Helps set the frozen mixture, giving it a smoother, firmer texture.
Lemons
Provide acidity and bright flavour that balances the sweetness.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and softens the frozen texture so it is less icy.
Pineapple
Supplies the main fruit flavour and some natural sweetness.

The step that matters

Dissolving the gelatine. Gelatine must be fully dissolved in the hot water before the other ingredients go in. Undissolved granules can leave lumps or uneven pockets of firmness in the frozen sherbet.

Swap the pineapple

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against lemon, sugar. 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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