Skip to main content
Dessert

Lemon Milk Sherbet

A chilled lemon-flavored milk dessert made with milk, cream, sugar, flour, and lemon juice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓
Lemon Milk Sherbet

Why it works: Milk and vanilla are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 19,187 recipes. Both carry ethyl caproate, which smells fruity, apple peel. The science ↓

Lemon Milk Sherbet

Ingredients

Directions

Make the base

  1. Boil the milk.

  2. Thicken with the flour mixed in a little cold water.

  3. Sweeten to taste and remove from heat.

Chill and freeze

  1. When partially cool, add the vanilla and cream.

  2. Put the mixture in the freezer.

  3. When it begins to freeze, add the water, sugar, and lemon juice.

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. Milk + vanillatop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,187 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl caproate (fruity, apple peel).

  2. Sugar + vanillatop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together35,032 recipes

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

  3. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

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

  4. Flour + vanillatop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,241 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Sugar and vanilla barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 35,032 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

Milk
Forms the creamy base and provides the dairy richness of the sherbet.
Flour
Starch thickens the hot milk and gives the mixture body.
Cream
Adds fat, which makes the frozen texture smoother and richer.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and lowers the freezing point, keeping the ice crystals softer.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity and bright lemon flavour.

The step that matters

Adding the lemon juice as it begins to freeze. Acid can curdle milk proteins, especially when the mixture is warm. Adding the lemon juice only after the base has cooled and started to freeze helps prevent curdling and keeps the flavour fresh and clean.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (milk, sugar, flour, cream, vanilla):

  1. Raisinfits better
  2. Figfits better
  3. Strawberryfits better
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, sugar, flour, cream, vanilla. 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 recipesLemon IceLemon Ice147 recipesVanilla Ice CreamVanilla Ice Cream108 recipesLemon SherbetLemon Sherbet103 recipes