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Dessert

Sherbet

A citrus sherbet made with Seville orange and lemon rinds, sugar syrup, and egg white.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Orange and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 10,634 recipes. Both carry 3-hexenal, which smells apple, fruity. The science ↓

Sherbet

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the flavour base

  1. Grate the yellow rinds of the oranges and lemons.

  2. Add the rinds to 1 gallon of water.

Make the syrup

  1. Boil 3 pounds of sugar with 3 pints of water to make a syrup.

  2. Add the egg white to the syrup to clarify it.

Combine and bottle

  1. Stir in the juice of the fruit until almost cold.

  2. Mix the syrup with the water and strain through muslin.

  3. Bottle for use.

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. Orange + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,634 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  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. Orange + sugartop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together19,212 recipes

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

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

Seville oranges
Their juice and rind supply the main citrus aroma and sharp acidity.
Lemons
Their juice adds further acidity and bright citrus flavour.
Loaf sugar
Dissolved into syrup, it provides sweetness and body to the drink.
Egg white
As it heats it binds impurities, which rise and can be strained off to clarify the syrup.

The step that matters

Stir in the juice until almost cold. Adding acidic juice to hot syrup can make the mixture cloudy and dull the fresh citrus flavour. Cooling it first helps keep the drink clear and bright.

Swap the orange

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

  1. Orangethe original
  2. Vanillafits about as well
  3. Limefits less well
  4. Raisinfits less well

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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