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Lemon Cheesecake Sauce

A simple lemon sauce made from grated rind, juice, and sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and sugar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 18% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 53,532 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Lemon Cheesecake Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Grate the rind of the lemons and strain the juice, keeping both.

  2. Combine the lemon rind, lemon juice, and sugar in a saucepan.

  3. Stir the mixture over medium heat until the sugar dissolves and it begins to thicken.

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. Lemon + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 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

Lemon juice
Provides the sharp acidity that defines the sauce's flavor and helps balance the sweetness.
Sugar
Sweetens the sauce and, once dissolved, contributes to its body and thickening as it heats.
Lemon rind
Adds concentrated lemon aroma from the aromatic oils held in the zest.

The step that matters

Stirring over medium heat until the sugar dissolves. Stirring keeps the sugar dissolving evenly and prevents scorching on the bottom of the pan. Heating only until the mixture begins to thicken, rather than boiling hard, helps avoid a burnt or grainy texture.

“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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