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Dessert

Lemon Cream

A thickened lemon custard made by steeping lemon rinds, dissolving sugar, and cooking with egg whites and yolk.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 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 Cream

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the infusion

  1. Thinly peel the rinds of the lemons and steep them in water for 12 hours.

  2. Strain the mixture and dissolve the sugar in it.

Make the custard

  1. Add the strained lemon juice, beaten egg whites, and egg yolk.

  2. Boil over low heat, stirring constantly, until thick like cream.

  3. Pour into a glass or china dish.

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).

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

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

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

Lemons
Provide the juice and the aromatic oil from the peel for the custard's flavour and acidity.
Fine loaf sugar
Dissolves into the infused liquid to sweeten the custard and balance the lemon's acidity.
Egg whites
Coagulate with heat to give the custard its thick, set structure.
Egg yolk
Adds richness and fat, and helps the custard thicken smoothly.

The step that matters

Boil over low heat, stirring constantly. Egg proteins set with heat and can curdle or scramble if they get too hot or are left unstirred. Low heat and constant stirring let the custard thicken evenly into a smooth cream.

Swap the lemon

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against 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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