Some years ago, I hosted an impromptu summer barbecue. The evening was hot enough to make the guy running the grill develop the sort of sweaty, red-faced look usually reserved for B-movie actors about to sacrifice hapless, nubile tourists to volcanoes. Looking for something to cool everyone down, I banged around in my cupboards and fridge until I stumbled upon a delightfully chilling cocktail: gin, water, lemon Crystal Light, and store-bought lemon sherbet.

Although I can assure you that it was a hit among my party guests, I know that drink doesn't sound appetizing. I blame the Crystal Light, but I know it's not the only culprit here — there's also the day-glo, milky-opaque lemon sherbet.

I've always liked having sherbet around. It reminds me of my childhood, when a plastic tub of sherbet was a frequent tenant in our freezer. Not as decadent as ice cream or as icy as sorbet, sherbet combines sorbet's fruit flavor with the creaminess of milk, eggs, and/or gelatin. Basically, if you think of sorbet as fish and ice cream as reptiles, sherbet is your fish with legs, crawling out of the sea to provide an evolutionary link between frozen desserts.

Unlike other frozen treats, sherbet isn't sexy, elegant, or novel – but it wasn't always that way. When sherbet was introduced to Europeans in the 1600s, the word was synonymous with a drink from the Middle East, in Persian called Sharbat. Sir Thomas Herbert wrote of sherbet, “The composition is cool water, into which they infuse sirrop of Lemons and Rose-water.” And, according to Jeri Quinzio in, Of Sugar and Snow: A History of Ice Cream Making, “The Persians served their sherbets over ice or snow.” Elegant, cold, and a bit mysterious? That sounds like the very definition of a sexy, cool treat to me.

Over time, the word sherbet grew to stand for two very specific things depending on your side of the Atlantic. In Britain, “sherbet” is a powder comprised of sugar, bicarbonate of soda, and citric acid that creates a fizzy drink when added to water, while stateside it's the frozen fruit/dairy treat that sits in my freezer until I have a barbecue.

And this American-style sherbet is often forgotten. It's a frozen treat of nostalgia, and I'm not just saying that because I associate it with my childhood. Most of the cookbooks I've found with sherbet recipes are the ones that also think it's okay to serve “Pear and Cheese Gelatin Mold” as a dessert to dinner-party guests. One of the last mentions of sherbet I read in a major media outlet was a piece from Rick Nichols in the Inquirer in August 2009. In it, he spoke with elderly members of the Philadelphia Cricket Club as they remembered their heyday of dining with silver, being repressed as women, and having Bassett's chocolate ice cream and raspberry sherbet for dessert. A sherbet which, Nichols points out, Bassett's doesn't even make anymore.

To be fair, there are a lot of good reasons why the sherbet you find in the grocery store might've fallen out of favor. The brightly fake colors, the association with other less-than-appetizing foods, and the fact that it's a convenient hiding place for needless ingredients like high fructose corn syrup are all possibilities in sherbet's loss of popularity. But if we're going to keep riding high on the current trend of reclaiming and gourmeting (sure it's a word) bygone foods like tater tots and deviled eggs, I'd like to suggest putting sherbet at the top of the list — or at least above the Pear and Cheese Gelatin Mold. Homemade sherbet is creamy, cold, and fruity without the day-glo insanity. Basically, it's the ideal treat to keep at home for hot summer days.

And if you have an impromptu barbecue, or just a rough day, I can recommend a killer cocktail.

Article image by article author. "DIY" photograph by John and Eliza Forder/Getty Images, "Pantry" photograph by Áslaug Snorradóttir.

Meg Favreau is a writer and comedian living in Philadelphia. Check out her website, www.megfavreau.com.