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Strawberry Sherbet

A frozen dessert made from sugar, water, lemon juice, crushed strawberries, and egg whites.

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

Why it works: Sugar and lemon are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 18% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 53,532 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Strawberry Sherbet

Ingredients

Directions

Make the syrup

  1. Add sugar to water and boil for 20 minutes without stirring.

Add fruit and freeze

  1. Once cool, add lemon juice and crushed strawberries.

  2. Freeze the mixture like ice cream.

  3. When nearly frozen, add beaten egg whites and freeze again until very stiff.

Ripen and serve

  1. Let it stand in the freezer for 1-2 hours to ripen before serving.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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 softens the frozen texture by lowering the freezing point.
Strawberries
Provide the main fruit flavour, colour and moisture.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the strawberry flavour.
Egg whites
Whipped into the nearly frozen mixture, they trap air and give a light, stiff texture.

The step that matters

Adding the beaten egg whites. Add them only when the mixture is nearly frozen. If it is too liquid, the whites deflate and the mixture becomes dense; if it is fully hard, they will not blend in evenly.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Raisinfits about as well
  3. Lemonthe original
  4. Datesfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against 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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