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Dessert

Cherry Sherbet

A chilled fruit dessert made from cherries, sugar, water, lemon juice, and egg whites.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Sugar and rum are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 14% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,908 recipes. Both carry beta-damascenone, which smells apple, rose. The science ↓

Cherry Sherbet

Ingredients

Directions

Make the base

  1. Boil the water, sugar, and cherry juice together for 5 to 10 minutes.

  2. Let the mixture cool.

Add the fruit and flavourings

  1. Add the pitted cherries and lemon juice.

  2. Stir in the rum or port wine.

Finish with egg whites

  1. Beat the egg whites until stiff.

  2. Fold them into the mixture.

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. Sugar + rumtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,908 recipes

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

  2. Sugar + lemontop 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. Lemon + rumtop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,341 recipes

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

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

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

Sugar and lemon 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

Cherries
Provide the main fruit flavour and colour of the sherbet.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and softens the texture of the frozen sherbet.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the sweetness and balances the fruit.
Egg whites
Trap air when beaten, giving the sherbet a lighter, airier texture.
Rum or port wine
Adds aroma and depth of flavour to the sherbet.

The step that matters

Fold in the beaten egg whites. Fold gently so the air beaten into the egg whites stays in the mixture. Stirring vigorously deflates the foam and makes the sherbet dense.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Pineapplefits better
  3. Bananafits better
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, rum, 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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