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Dessert

Sherbet

A chilled fruit-based dessert made with lemon and orange juice, water, cream, egg whites, and sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and orange 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

Make the mixture

  1. Juice the lemons and oranges into a large bowl.

  2. Add the water and cream to the juice.

  3. Whip the egg whites until stiff peaks form and fold them into the mixture.

  4. Sweeten to taste and mix well.

Freeze

  1. Chill in the freezer until firm, stirring occasionally.

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. Lemon + orangetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,634 recipes

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

  2. Cream + sugartop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

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

  3. Lemon + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

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

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

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

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

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

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

Lemons
Provide the sharp acidity that gives sherbet its bright, tangy flavor.
Oranges
Add sweetness and aroma that round out the citrus flavor.
Egg whites
Whipped to stiff peaks, they trap air and make the sherbet light and airy.
Cream
Adds fat that makes the frozen texture smoother and richer.
Sugar
Sweetens the mixture and keeps the frozen result softer and scoopable.

The step that matters

Whip the egg whites to stiff peaks and fold them in. Stiff peaks hold the trapped air that makes the sherbet light. Overwhipping makes the whites grainy and dry, and vigorous stirring after folding deflates them, leaving a denser result.

Swap the orange

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against lemon, cream, egg, sugar. 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.

More sherbet recipes

Pineapple 133Lemon 131Orange 76Strawberry 56Milk 53Grape 32 See all 12 →

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