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Sauce

Lemon Sauce I

A sweet and tart sauce made with sugar, lemon juice, butter, water, corn starch, and white wine.

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

Why it works: Butter and white wine are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,083 recipes. Both carry ethyl octanoate, which smells fruity, wine. The science ↓

Lemon Sauce I

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Mix sugar and corn starch in a bowl.

  2. Slowly pour boiling water into the mixture while stirring well.

  3. Cook until the corn starch is clear.

  4. Remove from heat and add lemon juice, butter, and white wine.

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 + white winetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,083 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  2. Lemon + white winetop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,832 recipes

    Shared aroma: myrcene (balsamic, herbaceous).

  3. Lemon + corntop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,927 recipes

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

  4. Butter + corntop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,345 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-pentanedione (butter, sweet).

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

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

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Corn starch
Thickens the sauce as it cooks, giving it body and a smooth texture.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and balances the sharpness of the lemon juice.
Lemon juice
Provides the bright, sour acidity that defines the sauce's flavor.
Butter
Adds richness and a silky mouthfeel to the finished sauce.
White wine
Adds aromatic depth and acidity to the sauce.

The step that matters

Cook until the corn starch is clear. Corn starch must be heated fully to swell and gelatinize; if undercooked, the sauce stays cloudy and tastes floury and will not reach full thickness.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Peachfits about as well
  3. Applefits about as well
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, butter, corn, white wine. 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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