Skip to main content
Dessert

Boston Sherbet

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

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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

  1. Combine raspberry juice and lemon juice, and sweeten to taste.

  2. Add maraschino liqueur and freeze the mixture.

  3. Once frozen, stir in chopped maraschino cherries.

  4. Incorporate the egg white as you would in other sherbets.

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

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

  3. Raspberry + eggtop 25% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,778 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

Lemon and egg barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 44,316 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 liquid and flavour base that freezes into the sherbet.
Maraschino liqueur
Adds aroma and sweetness, and lowers the freezing point so the sherbet stays softer.
Maraschino cherries
Add chewy texture and concentrated cherry flavour in the frozen base.
Egg white
Adds lightness and a smoother, airier texture to the frozen mixture.

The step that matters

Incorporate the egg white as you would in other sherbets.. Egg white must be folded in gently so it traps air and lightens the texture without deflating. Its method is left to the cook's reference to other sherbets, so check that technique before starting.

Swap the raspberry

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against 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.

You might also like

Lemon CakeLemon Cake228 recipesRaspberry JamRaspberry Jam150 recipesLemon IceLemon Ice147 recipesLemon SherbetLemon Sherbet103 recipes