Name: Plain Sherbet
Ingredients: 2 cups fresh lemon juice; 4 cups water; 2 cups granulated sugar; Thin yellow rind of 1 lemon

Why it works: Lemon and sugar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 18% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 53,532 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Plain Sherbet

Ingredients

2 cups fresh lemon juice
4 cups water
2 cups granulated sugar
Thin yellow rind of 1 lemon

Directions

Make the lemonade

Make a rich lemonade by mixing lemon juice, water, and sugar.
Pour boiling water over the thin yellow rind and let it cool.
Add the cooled rind to the lemonade mixture.

Freeze

Strain the mixture into a freezer and freeze until desired consistency.

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.

Lemon + sugartop 18% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together53,532 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

Lemon juice: Provides the sharp acidity that defines the sherbet's flavour.
Granulated sugar: Sweetens the mixture and lowers its freezing point, keeping the sherbet softer when frozen.
Water: Dilutes the juice and sugar into a lemonade base that freezes into icy, smooth texture.

“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.