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Dessert

Lemon Sherbet

A chilled lemon dessert made with lemon juice, sugar, arrowroot, and egg whites, frozen and stirred.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Lemon Sherbet

Why it works: Lemon and arrowroot match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 553 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Lemon Sherbet

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the lemons

  1. Squeeze the juice from the lemons and slice the lemons.

  2. Pour the boiling water over the sliced lemons.

Make the sherbet

  1. Mix the lemon juice, sugar, and arrowroot together.

  2. When the mixture is half frozen, stir in the beaten egg whites.

  3. Freeze again and let it mellow before serving.

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. Lemon + arrowroottop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together553 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Lemon + sugartop 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. Sugar + arrowroottop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,073 recipes

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

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

Lemons
Provide the juice that gives the sherbet its sharp, acidic flavour.
Sugar
Sweetens the sherbet and softens its texture by lowering the freezing point.
Arrowroot
Thickens the mixture and helps keep the frozen texture smooth.
Egg whites
Add air and lightness when beaten and folded into the partly frozen mixture.

The step that matters

Stirring in the beaten egg whites. Egg whites must be added when the mixture is only half frozen. If it is too firm, the whites cannot blend evenly, and if it is too liquid, they may not hold air, leaving the texture dense or uneven.

Swap the arrowroot

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

  1. Asparagusfits about as well
  2. Arrowrootthe original
  3. Sweet potatofits about as well
  4. Shallotfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against lemon, sugar, 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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