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Lemon Frappe

A chilled lemon-flavored milk beverage with whipped cream and beaten egg whites.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Cream and sugar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 43,450 recipes. Both carry 2,3-butanedione, which smells butter, sweet. The science ↓

Lemon Frappe

Ingredients

Directions

Make the base

  1. Heat the milk with the rind of 1 lemon and the sugar until warm.

  2. Cool the mixture and partially freeze it.

Finish and serve

  1. Add the juice of 4 lemons and freeze again.

  2. Beat the egg whites until stiff and fold them into the mixture along with the whipped cream.

  3. Serve chilled.

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. Cream + sugartop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

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

  2. Milk + lemontop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,053 recipes

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

  3. Milk + creamtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together29,399 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

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

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

  5. Milk + eggtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together88,785 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

Milk
Forms the creamy liquid base that the frozen dessert is built on.
Lemons
Provide acidity and bright lemon flavour from both rind and juice.
Cream
Adds fat and richness, giving a smoother, softer texture after freezing.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and lowers the freezing point, keeping the frozen mixture softer.
Egg whites
Whipped into foam to add lightness and an airy texture when folded in.

The step that matters

Beat the egg whites until stiff and fold them into the mixture. Egg whites must be beaten to stiff peaks and folded gently so the air is kept. Overmixing deflates the foam, leaving the frappe dense instead of light.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Strawberryfits better
  3. Raspberryfits better
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, cream, 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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