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Dessert

Sherbet

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

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

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

  2. Put the grated rinds into a 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 clear it.

Finish 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
Provide sharp acidity and aromatic oils from the rind and juice.
Lemons
Add extra acidity and brightness that balances the sugar.
Loaf sugar
Provides sweetness and body, and keeps the sherbet from freezing too hard.
Egg white
Coagulates when heated and gathers cloudy particles so they can be strained out.

The step that matters

Add the egg white to the syrup to clear it. Egg white proteins set when heated and trap cloudy particles, forming a foam that carries impurities to the surface. Straining removes them, so the syrup must be heated after the white is added for clearing to work.

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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