Skip to main content
Dessert

Milk Sherbet

A chilled dessert made from orange and lemon juice, sugar, milk, and folded egg whites.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓
Milk Sherbet

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 ↓

Milk Sherbet

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the base

  1. Squeeze the juice from the oranges and lemons.

  2. Add a little grated rind from the orange and lemon.

  3. Mix in the sugar and milk until combined.

Freeze and finish

  1. Freeze the mixture until partially frozen.

  2. Beat the egg whites to stiff peaks.

  3. Fold the beaten egg whites into the partially frozen 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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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 + milktop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,053 recipes

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

  3. Orange + milktop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,696 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

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

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

  5. Milk + eggtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together88,785 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

Milk
Provides creamy body and a soft, smooth texture in the frozen sherbet.
Egg whites
Beaten to stiff peaks, they add airy lightness to the partially frozen mixture.
Sugar
Sweetens the mixture and softens its texture during freezing.
Lemons
Add tartness that balances the sweetness of the sugar and milk.
Oranges
Contribute juice for flavour and acidity in the sherbet.

The step that matters

Fold the beaten egg whites into the partially frozen mixture. Egg whites must be beaten to stiff peaks first, then folded gently so the air is kept. Stirring them in hard deflates the foam, and the sherbet loses its light texture.

Swap the orange

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Orangethe original
  3. Figfits about as well
  4. Blueberryfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against lemon, sugar, milk, 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.

More milk sherbet recipes

Lemon 12 See all 53 →

You might also like

Orange Bundt CakeOrange Bundt Cake349 recipesLemon CakeLemon Cake228 recipesLemon IceLemon Ice147 recipesOrange Cream Rice PuddingOrange Cream Rice Pudding121 recipes