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Dessert

Delicious Plum Sherbet

A frozen dessert made from milk, sugar, plum pulp, and whipped egg whites.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and plum work together. They rank in the top 13% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 406 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

Delicious Plum Sherbet

Ingredients

Directions

Make the base

  1. Scald the milk in a saucepan.

  2. Dissolve the sugar in the milk and let it simmer for 8 minutes.

Add the plum pulp

  1. Cool the mixture, then add the sweetened and flavored plum pulp.

Freeze

  1. When half frozen, fold in the whipped egg whites.

  2. Complete the freezing process.

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. Milk + plumtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together406 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

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

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

  3. Milk + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together77,875 recipes

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

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

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

  5. Sugar + plumtop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,313 recipes

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

Milk and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 77,875 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

Rich milk
Adds richness and a creamy body to the frozen sherbet.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and keeps the frozen texture softer and scoopable.
Plum pulp
Provides the main fruit flavor, acidity, and moisture.
Egg whites
Whipped air lightens the texture and makes the frozen dessert less dense.

The step that matters

Fold in the whipped egg whites when half frozen. At this stage the mixture is slushy enough to take in the whites evenly. If it is too firm, the whites stay in lumps; if it is too soft, they deflate and the airy texture is lost.

Swap the plum

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Figfits better
  3. Raisinfits better
  4. Plumthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, 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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