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Dessert

Boston Sherbet

A frozen raspberry and lemon dessert flavored with maraschino liqueur and cherries, finished with egg white.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Raspberry and lemon are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,109 recipes. Both carry alpha-pinene, which smells pine, turpentine. The science ↓

Boston Sherbet

Ingredients

Directions

Make the base

  1. Combine raspberry juice, lemon juice, and sweeten to taste.

  2. Stir in ½ cup of maraschino liqueur.

Freeze and finish

  1. Freeze the mixture until solid.

  2. Once frozen, stir in the chopped maraschino cherries.

  3. Fold in the egg white until well combined.

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. Raspberry + lemontop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,109 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).

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

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

  3. Raspberry + eggtop 25% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,778 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

Lemon and egg barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 44,316 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

Raspberry juice
Provides the main liquid and fruit flavor that the sherbet is built on.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the flavor and balances the sweetness.
Maraschino liqueur
Adds flavor and alcohol, which lowers the freezing point so the sherbet stays softer.
Maraschino cherries
Add chopped pieces of fruit flavor and sweetness throughout the frozen mixture.
Egg white
Adds body and a lighter, airier texture when folded into the mixture.

The step that matters

Stir in the maraschino liqueur before freezing. Alcohol lowers the freezing point of a mixture, so it keeps the sherbet softer and easier to scoop. Adding it before freezing is what gives the finished texture.

Swap the raspberry

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

  1. Orangefits better
  2. Limefits better
  3. Raspberrythe original
  4. Blueberryfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against lemon, 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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