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Sauce

Lemon Sauce

A sweet and tart sauce made with lemon, sugar, flour, and butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Lemon Sauce

Why it works: Flour and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Lemon Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

  1. Boil the hot water and sugar for 5 minutes.

  2. Mix the flour with a little cold water, then add it to the boiling mixture.

  3. Cook for 8 to 10 minutes.

Finish and serve

  1. Stir in the grated lemon rind, lemon juice, and butter.

  2. Continue stirring until the butter is melted and serve immediately.

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. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Sugar + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  3. Lemon + buttertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,227 recipes

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

  4. Flour + lemontop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together30,404 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Sugar + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together98,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

Flour and butter barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 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

Sugar
Adds sweetness that balances the sharpness of the lemon.
Flour
Thickens the liquid into a sauce as it cooks.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity and bright lemon flavor.
Lemon rind
Adds aromatic lemon oil for fragrance without extra liquid.
Butter
Adds richness and a smooth, glossy finish.

The step that matters

Mix the flour with cold water before adding it. Flour dropped directly into hot liquid clumps as its starch hits the heat unevenly. Mixing it first with a little cold water makes a smooth slurry that disperses evenly and thickens the sauce without lumps.

Swap the lemon

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, flour, butter. 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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