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Dessert

Lemon Sauce

A sweet lemon sauce made with sugar, butter, water, lemon juice, rinds, and eggs, served hot with sponge cake.

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

Why it works: Butter and lemon are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 16% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 41,227 recipes. Both carry 3-hexenal, which smells apple, fruity. The science ↓

Lemon Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

  1. In a saucepan, combine sugar, butter, water, lemon juice, and lemon rinds.

  2. Bring to a boil.

  3. While boiling, beat the yolks of the eggs and add them to the mixture.

  4. Once well boiled, remove from heat and fold in the beaten egg whites.

Serve

  1. Serve hot with sponge cake.

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. Butter + lemontop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,227 recipes

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

  2. Butter + eggtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  4. Sugar + lemontop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

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

  5. Lemon + eggtop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together44,316 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,e)-2,4-decadienal (fatty, deep fried).

Sugar and lemon 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

Eggs
Yolks thicken the sauce as they cook, and whites folded in at the end add lightness and body.
Butter
Adds richness and a smooth, rounded mouthfeel to the sauce.
Sugar
Sweetens the sauce and balances the sharpness of the lemon.
Lemon juice and rinds
Provide acidity and bright aroma that cut through the sweetness and richness.

The step that matters

Adding the beaten yolks to the boiling mixture. Egg yolks can scramble if they meet very hot liquid too quickly. Beating them and adding them while the mixture is boiling, then cooking it well, is what lets the yolks thicken the sauce smoothly.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Lemonthe original
  3. Raisinfits about as well
  4. Figfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, butter, 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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