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Dessert

We Three Sherbet

A frozen dessert made with sugar, water, bananas, oranges, pineapple, lemon juice, and beaten egg whites.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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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 ↓

We Three Sherbet

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Dissolve the sugar in water over the stove.

  2. Let the mixture cool, then add the bananas, oranges, and pineapple.

  3. Stir in the lemon juice.

  4. When the mixture begins to freeze, fold in the beaten egg whites.

  5. Pass the bananas through a colander and chop the other fruits finely.

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. Orange + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,634 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  2. Banana + pineappletop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together733 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl isobutyrate (fruity, ethereal).

  3. Orange + pineappletop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,664 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl isobutyrate (fruity, ethereal).

  4. Banana + orangetop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,118 recipes

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

  5. Pineapple + lemontop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,964 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Sugar
Dissolves into the water to form a syrup that sweetens the sherbet and keeps it softly scoopable.
Bananas
Their pulp adds body and creaminess to the sherbet.
Egg whites
Beaten whites trap air, giving the sherbet a lighter, airier texture.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the fruit flavors and balances the sweetness.

The step that matters

Folding in the beaten egg whites. Fold gently, once the mixture has started to freeze, so the whites keep their trapped air. Stirring hard or adding them too early deflates the foam and leaves a denser sherbet.

Swap the banana

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Limefits better
  3. Figfits better
  4. Bananathe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, orange, pineapple, 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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