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Dessert

Lemon Sauce

A sweet lemon sauce made with sugar, corn syrup, water, cornstarch, and lemon juice, finished with butter, nutmeg, and lemon zest.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Lemon Sauce

Why it works: Lemon and nutmeg match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,318 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Lemon Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

  1. In a bowl, mix sugar, salt, and cornstarch.

  2. Gradually add boiling water while stirring constantly.

  3. Stir in the corn syrup.

  4. Boil for 5 minutes, then remove from heat.

  5. Add oleomargarine, nutmeg, lemon juice, and grated lemon rind.

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. Lemon + nutmegtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,318 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  2. Sugar + syruptop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,842 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  3. Corn + nutmegtop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together563 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  4. Corn + lemontop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,927 recipes

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

  5. Corn + syruptop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,678 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

What each ingredient does

Sugar
Provides sweetness and, with the syrup, body and a smooth texture in the sauce.
Cornstarch
Thickens the sauce as it heats with the liquid, giving it body.
Light corn syrup
Adds sweetness and keeps the sauce smooth and glossy rather than grainy.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the flavor and balances the sweetness.
Oleomargarine
Adds fat that gives richness and a silky mouthfeel to the finished sauce.

The step that matters

Adding the boiling water gradually while stirring constantly. Cornstarch clumps if liquid is poured in all at once, and it needs continuous stirring so the starch disperses evenly before thickening as it heats.

Swap the lemon

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, corn, syrup, nutmeg. 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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