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Dessert

Boston Sherbet

A frozen raspberry and lemon sherbet with maraschino liqueur, cherries, and whipped egg white.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Raspberry and lemon are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,109 recipes. Both carry alpha-pinene, which smells pine, turpentine. The science ↓

Boston Sherbet

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sherbet

  1. Combine raspberry juice, lemon juice, and sugar in a bowl.

  2. Stir in maraschino liqueur.

  3. Freeze the mixture until solid.

Finish and serve

  1. Once frozen, stir in chopped maraschino cherries.

  2. Whip the egg white until frothy and fold it into the 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. Raspberry + lemontop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,109 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).

  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. Raspberry + sugartop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3,101 recipes

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

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

Raspberry juice
Provides the main flavor and liquid base that freezes into the sherbet.
Sugar
Sweetens the mixture and lowers its freezing point for a softer texture.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the sweetness and flavor of the raspberry.
Maraschino liqueur
Adds aroma and flavor, and keeps the frozen mixture softer by lowering its freezing point.
Egg white
Whipped to foam and folded in, it lightens the texture of the frozen sherbet.

The step that matters

Folding in the whipped egg white. Whipped egg white is a foam of trapped air. Folding gently keeps that air in, so the sherbet stays light; stirring hard deflates it and makes the texture dense.

Swap the raspberry

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

  1. Orangefits better
  2. Vanillafits better
  3. Limefits about as well
  4. Raspberrythe original

Fit is the average pairing score against lemon, sugar, 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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