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Dessert

Greengage Sherbet

A frozen dessert made from greengage plums, water, sugar, and cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Sugar and cream are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 43,450 recipes. Both carry 2,3-butanedione, which smells butter, sweet. The science ↓

Greengage Sherbet

Ingredients

Directions

Make the base

  1. Combine water and sugar in a pot and bring to a boil.

  2. Allow the mixture to cool.

  3. Add the pitted greengage plums.

Freeze

  1. Pour the mixture into a freezer and freeze until nearly solid.

  2. Stir in the cream.

  3. Freeze until fully set.

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 + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

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

  2. Plum + sugartop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,313 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-penten-3-one (fish, pungent).

  3. Plum + creamtop 29% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together369 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-decalactone (peach, creamy).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Greengage plums
Provide the fruit flavor and tartness that give the sherbet its character.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and lowers the freezing point so the sherbet stays softer and scoopable.
Cream
Adds fat, which makes the frozen texture smoother and richer.

The step that matters

Stir in the cream after the mixture is nearly solid. Stirring partway through freezing breaks up ice crystals and blends the cream evenly. If the mixture is fully frozen, the cream cannot be mixed in smoothly.

Swap the plum

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Strawberryfits better
  3. Raspberryfits better
  4. Plumthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, cream. 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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